














Ov. .s \\J < rtTOr >/> ^ t» ^ ^ 

.c“I‘ ‘* rP^-'l' % "<^ 1 . -WJ' 







" X® 

o X ^ 

4- ~’^'t'(A'^'^ ^ '^j- y ' ''^'is^ <1 n.0 c^ 

'/- ^«iA* \^ s'^*/ '^:> v*o 

'' --'It^ifL"^ ^’■r ‘^ - 1 

4 .'^' '• sS=*>^- " ■■■^'’ 

X I fi "O ^ 0 « 

^ •‘’V 


<?v> \V “*■ 

O o 

^ " 




A c 


< 


^0 , X 


5 <^ - V* 


: 



« o 0 fl* 

tr 


^ '^ct' ' 



.V 




> 


A'’ 



'V ^ A ^ 

^ A^ ^ 

^V * ■ ? “, .=,'^ * 


V * 0 






aV</>. 




0 « 

0 

V A 


A '«• 

r 

x^ 

>■ 








*> <r 





.V </> 


V’ » 


* O 

0 N 0 ^ ^ 0 ’ 

. 0 ^ 

- ° 

1 ^ X 

V ^ 

oo' 

* 4 - 7 * , * 

vV "'y> 


. - ^ 0 ^ K ^ 

'- ' ® v'V 

■i yf^ .'ik^ 

^ '"t. < 

; °x> : 

vN" s''-'r''>" ’~”>°\-«,'’° 

' -. <,'?»■*'■ 

< . C/^ 

> oa 




V i fi 





0 


•^oo' 


• aV </'. 

'^i> » 

* '=> <^ -A ' "V > ’^sjitr*^ % 

^ ’ ' V - 0 * 

'P .'fro .j) '•'^ 

-< v^ c 

= x°°^. 4- -^c<i 

s^'"' . . . , ‘ » ;■« ’*'/ . “ '" /■ . , % 

.. - ^ X U ^ CP ^ ^ ^ 

kN .. ® ^> .<^^^ o 

aV ./> 




'V 

* v\V 




0 K 





j?- ■’=^- .-i' ' 

•. _/7\ ^ 


.V ^ 






8 n * 


I ^ or' ^ ';> ''"N^sisVs" ft ' ^ 

^ To aX* jA 8» A, ^ ^’r> 'J 

^S .AXM/A o % ■ 

^ ® 
qV ^ 

^ ^ V 



r 

^ S * o / ^ ^ ^ ° " 0 ^ ^ ^ ^ . 

' “ ’ ‘ * AV;r ^'\"' ” ' 'o'^t'” 



P* -A' A 


0 X 


O' 

A fx N C . 




'i 



-o o' : 


" 4 ^ 

V S. ^ ^ ; ^-v 

>' \V-* ^ 

'A “ 

%'= =“ .“ '^J> 

r» <t '' ** 


V 1 8 . 



J ^ cP 

xt 

A 

' ■'o . 

. X * 

% 

,i>'^ 

- ’^A 

s^'* 


A 





















L .ARcM 

■ ~ ^tm ^ ^V , z^VJlSEMV 



L > 'S ^ § 

Fftl '21 

SSf^y^^w ^^nmHM^^BS^vSBKUm 1 

























THE HISTORY OF 


HENRY ESMOND, Esq. 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 

THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF 
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
THE FOUR GEORGES 

AND 

CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


BY 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE DU MAURIER 
F. BARNARD, AND FRANK DICKSEE, R.A. 



TZ3 

IT 32sH 

\0 



nvo COPIES RECEIVED. 

*5 <L^ 1}^, 

• w ^ 


Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. 
^ All rights resfrved. 




^ ^ ^ ^ 

* ’•' -U - I , 

tJDr. 


' .*>■ 


CONTENTS 


PACK 

INTRODUCTION . xiii 

THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ. 

BOOK I 

THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF 
HIS LEAVING TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE 

CHAP. 

I. AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLE- 

WOOD HALL . . . . . . .14 

II. RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES 

AT CASTLEWOOD . . .. . . .19 

III. WHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, 

I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS PAGE TO ISABELLA . 2G 

IV. I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED 

TO THAT RELIGION VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD 36 

V. MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE 

RESTORATION OF KING JAMES THE SECOND . 42 

VI. THE ISSUE 0^ THE PLOTS^THE DEATH OF THOMAS, 

THIRD VISCOUNT ‘ OF CASTLEWOOD ; AND THE 
IMPRISONMENT OF HIS VISCOUNTESS . . 52 

VII. I AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND 

MOST KIND PROTECTORS THERE ... 65 

VIII. AFTER GOOD FORTUNE COMES EVIL . . .72 


CONTENTS 


viii 

CHAP. 

IX. I HAVE THE SMALLPOX, AND PEEPARE TO LEAVE 

CASTLEWOOD ....... 80 

X. I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD 

THERE ........ 97 

XI. I COME HOME FOR A HOLIDAY TO CASTLEWOOD, AND 

FIND A SKELETON IN THE HOUSE . . .104 

XII. MY LORD MOHUN COMES AMONG US FOR NO GOOD . 115 

XIII. MY LORD LEAVES US AND HIS EVIL BEHIND HIM . 124 

XIV. WE RIDE AFTER HIM TO LONDON . . . .136 


BOOK II 

CONTAINS MR. ESMOND’S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER MATTERS 


APPERTAINING TO THE ESMOND FAMILY 

I. I AM IN PRISON, AND VISITED, BUT NOT CONSOLED 

THERE . . . . . . . .150 

II. I COME TO THE END OF MY CAPTIVITY, BUT NOT 

OF MY TROUBLE , . . . . .159 

III. I TAKE THE QUEEN’S PAY IN QUIN’s REGIMENT . 167 

IV. RECAPITULATIONS . . . . . . .176 

V. I GO ON THE VIGO BAY EXPEDITIONS, TASTE SALT- 

WATER, AND SMELL POWDER . . . .181 

VI. THE 29tH DECEMBER . . . . . .191 

VII. I AM MADE WELCOME AT WALCOTE . . .197 

VIII. FAMILY TALK . . . . ' . . . 206 

IX. I MAKE THE CAMPAIGN OF 1704 . . , . 212 

X. AN OLD STORY ABOUT A FOOL AND A WOMAN . 220 

XI. THE FAMOUS MR. JOSEPH ADDISON . . . 229 

XII. I GET A COMPANY IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1706 . 239 


CONTENTS 


IX 


CHAP. 

XIII. 

XIV. 
XV. 


I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII, 


PAGE 

I MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDERS, AND 
FIND MY mother’s GRAVE AND MY OWN 
CRADLE THERE . . . . . .244 

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1707, 1708 . . . . 255 

GENERAL WEBB WINS THE BATTLE OF WYNENDAEL 262 


BOOK III 

CONTAINING THE END OF MR. ESMOND’S ADVENTURES 

IN ENGLAND 

I COME TO AN END OF MY BATTLES AND BRUISES . 285 

I GO HOME, AND HARP ON THE OLD STRING . . 297 

A PAPER OUT OF THE “SPECTATOR” . . . 309 

Beatrix’s new suitor . . . . . .326 

MOHUN appears FOR THE LAST TIME IN THIS 

HISTORY ....... 335 

POOR BEATRIX ....... 347 

I VISIT CASTLEWOOD ONCE MORE .... 352 

I TRAVEL TO FRANCE AND BRING HOME A PORTRAIT 

OF RIGAUD . 361 

THE ORIGINAL OF THE PORTRAIT COMES TO ENGLAND 370 
WE ENTERTAIN A VERY DISTINGUISHED GUEST AT 

KENSINGTON ....... 382 

OUR GUEST QUITS US AS NOT BEING HOSPITABLE 

ENOUGH ....... 395 

A GREAT SCHEME, AND WHO BALKED IT . . 404 

AUGUST 1st, 1714 409 


X 


CONTENTS 


THE LECTURES 

THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


SWIFT ..... 
CONGREVE AND ADDISON . 

STEELE ..... 
PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE . 

HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 
STERNE AND GOLDSMITH . 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


GEORGE THE FIRST . 

GEORGE THE SECOND 
GEORGE THE THIRD 
GEORGE THE FOURTH 

CHARITY AND HUMOUR . 


PAOB 

423 

456 

488 

520 

557 

587 


621 

643 

663 

686 


711 



LIST OF ILLUSTFATIONS 


THE DUEL IN LEICESTER FIELD . 

JOHNSON AND BOSWELL 

STERNE ..... 

CAPTAIN STEELE .... 

A LECTURE 

FIGURE OF A LADY 

MEMOIRS OF LIEUT. -GENERAL WEBB 





5 ) 

>> 



3 > 

SIR CHARLES 

GRANDISON-ESMOND 

MALBROOK 

s’en VA-T-EN 

GUERRE 

EXTERIOR 

OF 

CLEVEDON 

COURT 

INTERIOR 

OF 

CLEVEDON 

HALL 


DRILL . 

DR. JOHNSON 
A CONFERENCE 


Frontispiece 


• 

• 

. page 

XIV 

• 

• 


xiv 

. 

• 

• 

xiv 


• 

To face page 

xvi 

. 

• 

. page 

xvii 

(■■) 

» 

To face page 

XX 

S' 

(II.) 

• 


XX 

(III.) 

* 


XX 

• 


page 

xxiii 

• 

• 

• n 

xxvi 

• 

•i 


xxvii 

• 

• 

• 

xxviii 

• 

• 

• 

XXX 

• 

If 

• » 

xxxi 


• 

• 

xlvi 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ. 

HENRY ESMOND FINDS FRIENDS . . To face 14 


BEATRIX 


Xll 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


RECONCILIATION . 
MONSIEUR BAPTISTE 
THE LAST OF BEATRIX . 


To face page 


332 

374 

41G 


THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

DEAN SWIFT AT COURT . ' . 

ADDISON AT “ CHILD’s ” ..... 

CAPTAIN STEELE ...... 

LORD BATHURST INTRODUCES HIMSELF TO MR. 
STERNE ....... 

GOLDSMITH AT PLAY ..... 


438 

484 

500 

592 

GI4 


THE FOUR GEORGES 

THE DEATH OF KONIGSMARK . 

AN IMPROMPTU DANCE 

DR. JOHNSON AND THE ACTRESSES . 

THE LAST DAYS OF GEORGE THE THIRD . 

THE FIRST GENTLEMAN IN EUROPE . 


G34 

G54 

G72 

G82 

G98 



A LECTURK. 

“The Lecturer’s humour convulsed the audience with laughter. Mr. Thackeray’s 
manner of reading ‘How' doth the little Busy Bee’ was highly impressive; and his 
vivid yet delicate description of the Author of ‘ Robinson Crusoe ’ in the Pillory, drew 
tears from every eye. Among the company present we remarked Messrs. McHuffie, 
McDuffie. McGuffie. Revd. Messrs. McMinn and McMie, Mrs. Col. McGaspie (of Glen- 
bogie), Miss McCraw, in a word all the Notabilities of our town .” — Kildrummle Warder. 


II 






INTRODUCTION 


xvii 


Here is a note about one of those early ventures : — 

“ My dear Nan, — Your dear papa had a hundred subscribers 
and about two hundred more people at the first lecture, which 
was very successful on the whole. And he begins to think 
America is farther off than it was, and that it will be a pity to 
leave England. . . . 

“ And he sends his gals his blessing, which they are a hun- 
dred pounds richer to-day than yesterday at this time.” 



In December he went to Scotland for three weeks, and wrote 
to his friends Dr. and Mrs. John Brown, with whom he had 
been staying : — 


xviii ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 

“ Westbdry, Jmmary 5, 1862. 

My dear Mrs. Brown, — The children write me from afar 
off that you have written them a kind letter, and though I think 
it is twenty years ago since I left Edinburgh, I have not for- 
gotten you, and write a stupid line to say how do you do, and 
the Doctor and Jock and Helen. 

“ Since I came away I have been out a-visiting, and write this 
on this grand, thick official paper from a grand house, where I 
am treated very hospitably as usual, and propose to pass two or 
three days more, very possibly to try and work a little. All 
this pleasuring has unfitted me for it, and I begin to fancy I am 
a gentleman of £5000 a year. ... I have no earthly news to 
send you, only the most stupid good wishes. But I wish, 
instead of w'aiting in my room up here for dinner and three 
courses and silver and champagne, I was looking forward to 23 
and that dear old small beer, and then we would have a cab and 
go to the Music Hall and hear Mrs. Kemble. I sometimes fancy 
that having been at Edinbro’ is a dream, only there are the 
daguerreotypes, and a box of that horrid short-bread still, and 
the hat full of money to be sure. It was not at all cold coming 
to London, and the town of Berwick-on-Tweed looked beautiful, 
and I think my fellow-passenger must have wondered to see how' 
cleverly I slept. He was a .young Cambridge man, and knew 
your humble servant perfectly well. It was on the railroad I 
got the great news of Palmerston’s going out. It didn’t frighten 
you in Rutland Street much I dare say, but in the houses where 
I go we still talk about it, and I amongst the number as gravely 
as if I were a Minister myself. Why do we ? What does it 
matter to me who’s Minister? Depend upon it, 23 Rutland 
Street is the best, and good, dear, kind friends, and quiet talk, 
and honest beer. 

“ You see by the absurd foregoing paragraphs that I have 
nothing in the world to say, but I want to shake you and the 
Doctor by the hand, and say thank you, and God bless you. 

“ W. M. Thackeray.” 

In January he says, “They make me an offer of £150 at the 
Portman Square Rooms — pretty well for six hours.” 

I have been surprised sometimes, reading the various criti- 


INTRODUCTION 


XIX 


cisrns of my father’s work, to find how much — especially when 
he first began to lecture — people dwelt on his powers of criti- 
cism, his severe judgments, his sarcastic descriptions, whereas 
the other healing qualities are almost passed over. 

And yet the gift of appreciation was his in no common degree, 
the instinct of discerning true dignity and beauty in humble 
things; that Christian gift of making simplicity great, of seeing 
what is noble and eternal in the most natural and ^d™ionplace 
facts. It takes a Newton to divine the secrets of natur^from a 
hint; a Bach can create a new heaven upon earth with tho tinkling 
wires of a spinet; working in his own line, a week-day preacher, 
as my father loved to call himself, takes peaceful reiteration of 
daily duty for his text, and preaches the supremacy of goodness. 

Who will not remember the passage in which he says of great 
men: “They speak of common life more largely and gener- 
ously than common men do ; they regard the world with a man- 
lier countenance. . . . Learn to admire rightly, try to frequent 
the company of your betters in books and life.” \ 

On the last day of her life Mrs. Brookfield, my fathei^life- 
long friend and mine, quoted this sentence to me, with|4 smile 
and that bright steadfast look in her eyes, which ever seemed 
like an accompaniment to her voice. 

Here is a quotation from a letter of these times, in which, 
writing to his mother concerning some people in troubWhe says, 
“ Cowardly self-love cries out Save — save, or you may'^tarv^^too. 
... So please God we will, and do that work resolutely, for the 
next year. I am very well in health, I think, having, Staved off 
my old complaint ; and the only thing that alarms me sometimes 
is the absurd fancy that, now the money making is actually at 
hand, some disaster may drop down and topple me ^er. But 
that’s a fancy only. . . . The novel is getting on pretty , well, . . . 
and now let’s call a cab and go to Oxford.” The \novel, of 
course, was “ Esmond.” 

“ Esmond” did not seem to be a part of our lives, as “ Pen- 
dennis ” had' been. Although I have seen the MSS. as it was 
written by Mr. Crowe to dictation, and also with pages in our 
own youthful handwriting, I cannot remember either the writing 
or the dictating, nor even hearing “ Esmond ” spoken of except 
very rarely. 


XX 


ESMOxXJJ AND THE LECTURES 


My sister and 1 were a great deal away at this time, staying 
in Paris with our grandparents, who were living just out of the 
Champs Elysees, in the rue d’Angouleme, a street which has 
changed its name with succeeding dynasties. (The Champs 
Elysees happily remain Champs Elysees still, impartially appro- 
priate to the various governments in turn, whether monarchical, 
imperial, or popular.) 

“ As you are to be in Paris, my dearest fambly, for the fetes,” 
my father writes in August 1852, “I send you a word and a 
good morning, and such a little history of the past week as that 
time affords. 

“ Eliza does for me, and her brother runs my errands. I have 

been twice to Richmond, where Mrs. F receives me with the 

greatest graciousness, and announces to all her friends that I am 
the most agreeable of men — that she looks upon me in the light 

of a son. At one of these dinners was Mr. B and his 

daughter, and if I had a daughter like that, all I can say is, that 
I should have a bore for a daughter. She scarce ceased speak- 
ing to me the whole of dinner-time ; and told me that the sum- 
mer was hot, the mountains were high, and so forth, and next 
me, on t’other side, was a very nice, natural, ugly girl, that was 

worth a hundred of her. My favour with Mrs. F is not yet 

over ; she sent me a tabinet waistcoat of green and gold, such 
an ugly one ! but I shall have it made up and sport it in Amer- 
ica, and keep the remainder for pin-cushions. ... I sent away 
the first sheets of ‘ Esmond ’ yesterday. It reads better in print ; 
it is clever, but it is also stupid, no mistake. Other parts will 
be more amusing, I hope and think.” 

“ I have been living in the last century for weeks past, in the 
day, that is ; going at night as usual into the present age, until I 
get to fancy myself almost as familiar with one as with the other, 
and Oxford and Bolingbroke interest me as much as Russell and 
Palmerston — more, very likely. The present politics are behind 
the world, and not fit for the intelligence of the nation.” 

About the translation of “ Esmond ” into French he writes to 
his mother: “I was going to write on this very little sheet of 
paper when your letter came in. Mr. De Wailly’s is the best 
offer, but is it possible he can give us as much as 4000 francs? 
There must be some mistake, I fear. I have given up, and only 





«KAui l*v <t fuji twc Ktt4 tiM ^ '(‘”^3 C(»u|>[t Utecc. 

^C^^uL VU^T 








lu <-(»ctUAA^ ai)vtJr\p yZi"^^ fu. <»i’a«<t>ci A. Ldif <>l<. ftu. |U'w4‘ 

|auI1l*v^ . jvt^CuA^ U7A£t>t Iw t, U*;!. 5a-|v|uA4~. Tflu, 

^ lU*. »jcn*<44^ tHAJU. a. cle^j^ ^ fj^, . 

^Mvtotrs i!. Cj^ivtAoi \/iMr: 






1 



Uc- (wAttul ttvi \oV*i^ UntUrtV ft»^ ‘lH.OtA ^ ^rt47n,«W»' 

CtVft'U.iWti ^ wb' lt<xj, IrtAM. |vT<j Alixj^ chuoi^^ Co^TcUH-i c(*^<Mu" O^vjUAlAUC:, 

u^iii Uiou^o/I. ^UM4,iri jj il ViU^ 




I 


I N T R O D U C T I O N 


XXI 


had for a day or two, the notion for the book in numbers ; it is 
much too grave and sad for that.” . . . 

“ The great Revolution’s a-coming, and the man not here who’s 
to head it. I wonder whether he is born, and where he lives. 
The present writers are all employed as by instinct in unscrewing 
the old framework of society and getting it ready for the smash.” 

To Lady Stanley he writes about the same time, “ I am writ- 
ing a book of cut-throat melancholy suitable to my state, and 
have no news of myself or anybody to give you which should not 
be written on black-edged paper, and sealed with a hatchment.” 

My father used often to go otf into the country with his work 
for a day or two, and among other places he liked Southborough, 
near Tunbridge Wells, where he used to stay at an inn and 
write. The summer when he was busy upon “Esmond,” his 
cousins, Mrs. Irvine and Miss Selina Shakespear, were living on 
Rustington Common, and he used to go over sometimes and 
spend the day with them. It was on one of these occasions 
that he drew the scenes from the life of Lieut.-General Webb 
here given, and which Miss Shakespear has kept all these years. 

Meanwhile the Lectures continued their course. He under- 
took a northern tour, during which, however, he still worked at 
his book. 

*W. M. T. to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth. 

“ Glasgow, 1862 . 

“ Saturday, Sunday, Monday . — My dearest mother, I have 
had a working fit on me for the last many days, and have slaved 
away without a day’s intermission ; at home, at Brighton, and 
regularly since I have been here too. I wish I had six months 
more to put into the novel : now it’s nearly done ; its scarce 
more than a sketch, and it might have been made a durable 
history, complete in its parts and its whole. But at the end of 
six months it would want other six. It takes as much trouble 
as Macaulay’s History almost, and he has the vast advantage of 
remembering everything he has read, whilst everything but im- 
pressions — I mean facts, dates, and so forth — slip out of my head, 
in which there’s some great faculty lacking, depend upon it. 

“ I came on Tuesday night. What a comfort to journey four 
hundred miles in twelve hours, reading a volume of Swift, and 


xxii ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 

noting it, all the way, and got up like a man next morning to 
my work. It’s true I couldn’t sleep for the infernal noise of 
the place. On Thursday I went off, accompanied by Mr. Jeames, 
to Balloch, on the brink of Loch Lomond, and passed two days 
there scribbling away, but in quiet and fresh air. I had a boat 
on the loch, and it’s very pretty, but not so very pretty after all. 
It’s nothing to the Swiss lakes or Killarney. And I’m glad I 
didn’t bring the little women, as I had half a thought of doing. . . . 

“ The air is choky with the smoke of ten thousand furnaces 
for miles round, and the whole landscape blacked all over with 
Indian ink. The steamers smoke more, and there are more of 
them than anywhere ! — and after the pure air of London I can’t 
breathe this, nor sleep in the noisiest Babel of a place I’ve ever . . . 

‘‘ A man interrupted me in this paragraph yesterday, and we 
went out a-lionizing, after which no work was done. Now my 
dearest old mother conies in at the fag end of a day’s writing, 
and that’s sure to be a stupid, yawning letter. Indeed, when 
isn’t there a day’s work of some sort in my life as it now is? 
You would have had many a letter but for that weariness which 
makes the sight of a pen odious, and sends me to sleep of a 
night at home when I don’t go into the world. A man must 
live his life. Circumstance makes that for us partly, indepen- 
dent of ourselves. ... 

“ The folks here don’t understand in the least what I’m about, 
but are very cordial and willing to be pleased. One fat old 
merchant to whom I brought a letter mistook me, or rather took 
me, for an actor (and so I am), and said, ‘ Have the goodness 
to call upon me tomiorrow at one o’clock.’ Well, I should have 
gone, just for the fun of the thing, only the old boy, who had 
never heard of me from Adam, heard in the meantime wdio I 
was, and came puffing up my stairs yesterday and took me out 
sight-seeing, and to dinner afterwards at his hideous house, 
where he dispensed hospitality very kindly to a dozen people, 

and put me in mind of T ’s good-humour and jollity and 

want of education. The rich man had toadies about him too, 
just as in other places. It was good to watch them — two of 
them were painters anxious for commissions from him. 

“I looked at Carlisle as w^e passed through with a queer feel- 
ing. I was offered, do you remember ? to be editor of the Car- 


INTRODUCTION 


XXlll 


lide Patriot the first year of my marriage, and refused, I think, 
because it was too Tory for me (it was in the Lonsdale interest). 
What queer speculations the might have beens are ! . . 

“ Thursday, February 26, 1852. I don’t think I have got 
much good news, or otherwise, to tell you since I last wrote. 
But my book has got into a more cheerful vein, that’s a com- 
fort, and I am relieved from the lugubrious doubts I had about 
it. Miss Bronte has seen the first volume, and pronounces it 
‘admirable and odious.’ Well, I think it is very well done, and 
very melancholy too ; but the melancholy part ends with Vol. 1, 
and everybody begins to move and be more cheerful.” 

“ I wish the new novel wasn’t so grand and melancholy,” 
he repeats elsewhere ; “ the hero is as stately as Sir Charles 
Grandison — something like Warrington — a handsome likeness 
of an ugly son of yours. There’s a deal of pains in it that 



SIR CHARLES GRANDISON-ESMOND. 


XXIV 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


goes for nothing ; and my paper’s full, and 1 am my dearest I 
mother’s affectionate son, W. M. T.” 

1 

Again he writes from Birmingham, from a friend’s house, ] 
“Such a nice family — nice children, a sweet, kind wife, Yorke | 
a perfect prize parson — pious, humble, merry, orthodox to the 
most lucky point, liked by everybody. How I should like to be ! 
like Yorke! — not for the being liked, but for that happy ortho- •< 
doxy, which is as natural with him as with Addison and other 
fortunate people, and which would make my dear old Granny | 
so happy if I had it.” ■ 


Part II. 

It will be remembered that E. FitzGerald, writing to F. Ten- 
nyson in 1852, says, “Though I have had to march to London 
several times, I generally ran back again as fast as I could, 
much preferring the fresh air and the fields to the wilderness of 
monkeys in London. Thackeray I saw for ten minutes ; he was 
just in the agony of finishing a novel, which has arisen out of 
the reading necessary for his lectures, and relates to those times 
— of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his novel; ■ 
he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to ‘ 
shake off the fumes of it.” 

Here is another mention by my father of the new book : — 

“ Esmond looks very stately and handsome in print, and, bore 
as he is, I think will do me credit. But the printers only send 
me one hundred pages a week, and at this rate will be three 
months getting through the novel.” . . . 

“I have just recovered from a fine panic,” he says in Sep- 
tember 1852; “my third volume was lost at the publishers. 
What on earth was I to do, thinks I ? That will keep me six 
weeks more at home, and that will enable me to have the chil- 
dren ; but the missing volume cast up again an hour ago.” 

By this time the American journey was settled, and the time | 
was getting very near for his going. j 

“ Four more days gone, and again this is the very first minute ^ 
for writing. I have been to Alderley for a day since ; said adieu ' 


INTRODUCTION 


XXV 


to Liverpool, and had plenty of audience ; come to London by 
the nigdit mail train, and arrived at poor dreary old Kensington 
yesterday, Sunday morning, and all to-day have been busy till 
now. I found at home my women’s letters, and my dearest old 
mother’s postscript. I am glad to have such good accounts of 
you all, and have just sent off positively the last sentence of the 
‘ Esmond ’ dedication ; and if I had three hours more on Satur- 
day, I would have been off by that boat 1 think, so beautiful the 
weather is, and so tempting the sunshine. 

“ I hope to send you over ‘ Esmond ’ next week. God bless 
ray children, and kiss everybody all round for the sake of son 
and father.” 

“Now I am going to work for three hours, and to re-read 
‘ Vanity Fair ’ for a cheap edition.” 

One of the things I remember his saying about “ Esmond” I 
have already put into print. It was when he exclaimed in 
pleasure and excitement, that a young publisher called George 
Smith — almost a boy, he said — had come with a liberal cheque 
in his pocket, to offer for the unfinished novel. 

1 have also written of a sort of second sight my father used 
sometimes to speak of. Occasionally when he described places, 
he said he could hardly believe he had not been there ; and in 
one of the battles in “ Esmond,” he told us that the very details 
of the foreground were visible to him as he wrote, even to some 
reeds growing by a streamlet, and the curve of the bank by 
which it flowed. I find a sentence in one of his letters which 
corroborates this impression. 

“ I was pleased to find Blenheim,” he wrote to his mother in 
August 1852, “ was just exactly the place I had figured to my- 
self, except that the village is larger ; but I fancied I had actu- 
ally been there, so like the aspect of it was to what I looked 
for. I saw the brook which Harry Esmond crossed, and almost 
the spot where he fell wounded, and walked down to the Danube, 
and mused mighty thoughts over it. It seems grand to walk 
down to the Danube ; but the Thames at Putney is twice as big 
and handsome as the river here.” 

We give a version of “ Malbrook ” going off on his campaign, 
which may interest my readers. 

“Esmond” was the only book of my father’s that was first 


XXVI 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 



MALBROOK s’eN VA-T-EN GUERRE. 

published in all the dignity of three volumes. It came out in 
periwig and embroidery, in beautiful type and handsome pro- 
portions. How well I can remember the packet arriving at 
Paris after he had sailed for America, and our opening it and 
finding the handsome books, and reading the dedication. 

There are but one or two descriptions of places in the whole 
of “ Esmond.” It is by allusion rather than by statement that 
the impression is given of that brightly painted, crowded, event- 
ful time, which he gives back to us. Does not one almost 
breathe the morning air when Esmond comes out of Newgate ? 
“ The fellow in the orange-tawny livery with blue lace and 
facings was in waiting when Esmond came out of prison, and 
taking the young gentleman’s slender baggage, led the way out 
of that odious Newgate, and by Fleet Conduit down to the 
Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they went up the 
river to Chelsey. Esmond thought the sun had never shone 
so bright ; nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple 



INTRODUCTION 


XXVll 


Garden, as they rowed by, looked like the Garden of Eden to 
him, and the aspect of the quays, wharves, and buildings by 
the river, Somerset House, and Westminster (where the splendid 
new bridge was just beginning), Lambeth tower and palace, and 
that busy shining scene of the Thames swarming with boats and 
barges, filled his heart with pleasure and cheerfulness — as well 
such a beautiful scene might to one who had been a prisoner so 
long, and with so many dark thoughts deepening the gloom of 
his captivity. They rowed up at length to the pretty village of 
Chelsey.” 

It is well known that Castlewood was Clevedon Court in 
Somersetshire, and by the kindness of Sir Edmund Elton we are 



EXTERIOR OF CLEVEDON COURT. 


able to give the sketch of the interior of the old hall (page 
xxviii). It is Kensington that echoes through the latter part of 
“Esmond.” Once when we were walking with him through 
“ the Square,” as Kensingtonians still call it, he pointed to 
No. 1 and said, “That is where Lady Castlewood lived,” and I 
think he added something about the back windows looking 
across the lanes to Chelsea. I have sometimes wondered where 
Esmond’s lodgings were. Perhaps he lived in one of those old 




xxviii ESMONjD AND THE LECTUliES 



INTERIOR OF CLEVEDON HALL. 

houses among the gardens at Brompton ; for he meets Addison 
one night walking back to his lodgings at Fulham. We all 
know how Colonel Esmond from Chelsea spent one night at the 
“Greyhound” “over against” Lady Castlewood’s house in 
Kensington Square, the house to which the portrait of Frank 
Castlewood by Rigaud was sent. There is a picture of the old 
Pretender, magnificent and blue-ribboned, in the gallery at Dres- 
den, which may have suggested the Castlewood picture in very 
fact, for my father must have seen it when he was in Dresden 
about 1851. 

Mr. Egg, R.A., painted a picture of Beatrix and Esmond, 
which is now in the National Gallery, and which my father 
went to look at in the artist’s studio; hnt there is a much more 
striking picture painted in the pages of “ Esmond,” when Harrv, 


INTRODUCTION 


XXIX 


with his terrible news, walks into the room where all the shop 
people and mantua-makers are crowding. The well-known epi- 
logue will not be forgotten, when Esmond drives the crier away 
from under Beatrix’s window, where he is proclaiming the death 
of the Duke of Hamilton. “ The world was going to its busi- 
ness again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for 
them. . . . Esmond thought of the courier, now galloping on 
the North road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yester- 
day, that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand 
great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant 
heart, beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust 
quiescent.” . . . 

A few topographical notes for “ Esmond ” remain in my 
father’s writing. 

“ Statue of the King in Stork's Market^ a very magnificent 
statue of Charles H. and Time on horseback trampling upon 
an enemy, all in white marble, at the sole cost of that worthy 
citizen and Alderman Sir R. Viner, Knt. Bart.” 

Golding Square. — Fleet Brook. — This mighty chargeable 
I beautiful work, rendering navigable the Fleet Brook, a ditch from 
the river Thames up to Holborn Bridge ; the curious stone bridge 
over it ; the many huge vaults on each side thereof to treasure 
up Newcastle coals for the use of the poor.” 

“ The prisons were Newgate, Ludgate, and Queen’s Bench, 
Fleet, Marshalsea, New Prison, Whitechapel, and Westminster 
'Gate House.” 

“ Exchange . — There be many Exchanges in London, besides 
markets and the Royal Exchange — as that stately building called 
the New Exchange and Exeter Change, both in the Strand, where 
all attire for ladies and gentlemen is sold.” 

“ St. PaxiVs building in 1702 appeared, through a wood of 
scaffolding, the wonder and glory of the kingdom.” 

There are also some notes about the Duke of Marlborough. 
“ Lord Oxford’s knowledge of the Duke’s misdeeds ; and that 
Lord Oxford, making the Duke know that his life was in his 
hands, was the reason of Marlborough’s voluntary exile in the 
year 1712.” Also there are a few incidental notes — 

“ The ranks wore their wigs in bags, and all have swords.” 


XXX 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


“ Plum broth at Christmas, and sillabub in May, were consid- 
ered suitable dishes.” 

“ Queen Anne had forty -eight chaplains in ordinary.” ^ 

•j 

The following letter to a friend of his in Paris has remained 
among our papers : — ; 

“ Dear Forgues, — I have just read the article in the Revue 
des deux Mondes, and am glad to write a line of thanks and 
goodwill to the author, with whom, as I think Pichot has already 
told you, I have been angry for these three whole years. 

“In 1851, a propos of my Lectures, you wrote in a French 
paper published here that I had praised Addison in order to 
curry favour with the English aristocracy. My honour was 
wounded at the idea that a friend should make such a charge 
against me. A critic may like or dislike ray books, and of course 
is welcome to his opinion, but he has no right to attribute to 





DRILL. 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXI 


rae mean motives, or at least, I have a right to be angry if he 
does. And now I will give you the history of Addison, whom 
I don’t like personally, but whose humour I admire with 
all my heart; more than his humour, I admire his conduct 
through life ; rich or poor, he was an upright, honest, dignified 
gentleman, a worthy man of letters ; he underwent bad fortune 
with admirable serenity. I thought it was right to praise him 
as one of our profession, and leave the reader to make his own 
moral from what I said. You have seen there has been an 
absurd outcry here about neglected men of genius, about the 
excuses to be made for literary men ; they are to get drunk, to 
bilk their tradesmen, to leave their children without bread ! . . . 

“ I have been earning my own bread with my pen for near 
twenty years now, and sometimes very hardly too, but in the 
worst time, please God, never lost my own respect !” 



DR. JOHNSON. 


The picture of “ another worthy man ot letters ” may perhaps 
not unfitly illustrate this correspondence. 


XXXll 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


Part III. I 

Wpien we went abroad the summer before my father sailed j 
for America, we met our grandparents on the Rhine ; then wei 
travelled on to Switzerland, where my father left us. We didl 
not see him again after we parted from him in Switzerland.! 
But he wrote to us very often. Here is a letter to my sister jT 
from Augsburg : — 

“ My dearest Min., — T his morning came a little letter, which j 
they might as well have given to me yesterday. (You see I i 
give you my other hand* as when we walk together I give oner; 
hand to Anny and one to you.) They might, I say, have;! 
given me the letter when I went to the post for it yester-ij 
day, for there it has been lying these three days. Yesterday 'I 
when I arrived it was all rain and melancholy here, and to-day, i 
Sunday, it’s all sunshine and pleasure, the great streets thronged Ij 
with people — such ugly women in such caps! and bands of! 
brass-music blowing beautifully all about the town. It’s full oft 
the most extraordinary churches, pictures, statues, and gim- 
cracks of every sort. I went into many churches yesterday — 
one something like the splendid St. Ambrogio at Milan, you ' 
remember, but spick and span new, and most byooootifully giltj 
painted and decorated with tableaux representing St. Ambi ogio’s I 
life and miracles, in which latter anybody may believe who ;■ 
chooses. In one of the confessionals of another church, another i 
most byoooooootifle sham-antique church, where I was at dusk, - 
I heard whisswhisswhisspering in the confessional, and then ^ 
hummummumbrum the priest talking, and all this excited my i 
awe and curiosity, and I thought to myself, perhaps there is 
some lovely creature in there on her knees to a venerable friar, 
confessing some most tremendous crime. But presently hopped 
out of the confessional a little old speckled hunched-back frog 
of a creature in a green shawl, and plopped down on its knees | 
and said some prayer — which it was quite right no doubt to i 
say — but all the romance was gone at the sight of the queer i 

* He used his upright handwriting when he wrote to my sister, his slanting j 
handwriting when he wrote to me. j 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXlll 


little trot of a woman, who I am sure could have only had the 
most trumpery little sins to chatter about, and so I came out of 
the church not a bit better Catholic than I went in. Don’t you 
see, if she had been a lovely countess who had just killed her 
grandmother or smothered her babby, I might have gone on 
being interested and awe-stricken? but Polly the cook-maid, 
who owns to having given a pie to the policeman, or melted the 
fat into the grease-pot, I can’t go for to waste my compassion 
and wonder upon her. And here’s the mistake about these fine 
churches, pictures, music, and splendid and gracious sights and 
sounds with which the Catholics entrap many people — their 
senses are delighted, and they fancy they are growing religious ; 
it’s a romantic wonder, not a religious one. We must set to 
work to have the truth with all our hearts and soul and strength, 
and take care not to be juggled by roman ticalities and senti- 
mentalities. This church of St. Louis is ornamented with the 
most beautiful dolls you ever saw, the size of life, and painted 
and tickled up in the most charming way, with pink cheeks, fresh 
gilt glories, white eyes, wooden lilies, and everything that’s nice. 
And the people kneel before them in crowds and worship Ma- 
donna and her Sacred Infant, and the beautiful St. Louis of 
Gonzaga and the beautiful St. Francis of the Indies — that is to 
say, charming figures representing these holy persons, and act- 
ing them in wood. But do I believe that the souls of the blest 
go about with gilt cart-wheels round their heads ! Fiddledee. 
These are but childish symbols and play — and there’s the dinner 
bell ; and as I love my children on earth, I know the Father of 
us all loves us.” 

The following letter was written to me : — 

“ My dearest A., — I must and will go to America, not be- 
cause I like it, but because it is right I should secure some 
money against my death for your poor mother and you two 
girls. And I think if I have luck I may secure nearly a third 
of the sum that I think I ought to leave behind me by a six 
months’ tour in the States. And you children during that time 
must consider yourselves as at college ; and work, work with all 
your heart. You’ll never haves such apother opportunity ; when 


xxxiv ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


I come back, please God, your studies will be interrupted, as I 
shall want a secretary. So now please to learn French very 
well, and to play the piano if you can. It will be a comfort 
to me in future days, when we shall be in some quieter place 
and manner of life than here in London, and I shall like my 
women to make music for me. I should read all the books that 
granny wishes, if I were you ; and you must come to your own 
deductions about them, as every honest man and woman must 
and does. When I was of your age 1 was accustomed to hear 
and read a great deal of the Evangelical (so called) doctrine, and 
got an extreme distaste for that sort of composition — for New- 
ton, for Scott, for the preachers I heard and the prayer-meetings 
I attended. I have not looked into half-a-dozen books of the 
French modern reformed churchmen, but those I have seen are | 
odious to me. D’Aubigne, I believe, is the best man of the 
modern French Reformers ; and a worse guide to historical truth 
(for one who has a reputation) I don’t know. If M. Gossaint 
argues that because our Lord quoted the Hebrew scriptures 
therefore the Scriptures are of direct Divine composition, you 
may make yourself quite easy ; and the works of a reasoner who 
would maintain an argument so monstrous, need not, I should 
think, occupy a great portion of your time. Our Lord not only 
quoted the Hebrew writings (drawing illustrations from every- 
thing familiar to the people among whom He taught, from their 
books poetic and historic, from the landscape round about, from 
the flowers, the children, and the beautiful works of God), but 
He contradicted the old scriptures flatly ; told the people that 
He brought them a new commandment — and that new com- 
mandment was not a complement, but a contradiction of the 
old — a repeal of a bad, unjust law in their statute books, which 
He would suffer to remain there no more. It has been said an 
eye for an eye, &c., but I say to you no such thing ; Love your 
enemies, &c. It could not have been right to hate your enemies 
on Tuesday and to love them on Wednesday. What is right 
must always have been right, before it was practised as well as 
after. And if such and such a commandment delivered by 
Moses was wrong, depend on it it was not delivered by God, 
and the whole question of complete inspiration goes at once. 
And the misfortune of dogmatic belief is, that the first principle 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXV 


granted that the book called the Bible is written under the 
direct dictation of God ; for instance, that the Catholic Church 
is under the direct dictation of God, and solely communicates 
with Him ; that Quashimaboo is the direct appointed priest of 
God, and so forth — pain, cruelty, persecution, separation of dear 
relatives follow as a matter of course. What person possessing 
the secret of Divine truth by which she or he is assured of 
heaven, and which idea she or he worships as if it was God, 
but must pass nights of tears and days of grief and lamentation 
if persons naturally dear cannot be got to see this necessary 
truth ? Smith’s truth being established in Smith’s mind as the 
Divine one, persecution follows as a matter of course — mar- 
tyrs have roasted all over Europe, all over God’s world, upon 
this dogma. To my mind, scripture only means a writing, and 
Bible means a book. It contains Divine truths, and the his- 
tory of a Divine Character ; but imperfect, but not containing 
a thousandth part of Him ; and it would be an untruth before 
God were I to hide my feelings from my dearest children ; as it 
would be a sin if, having other opinions, and believing literally 
in the Mosaic writings, in the six days’ cosmogony, in the ser- 
pent and apple and consequent damnation of the human race, I 
should hide them, and not try to make those I loved best adopt 
opinions of such immense importance to them. And so God 
bless my darlings and teach us the truth. 

“ Every one of us in every fact, book, circumstance of life 
sees a different meaning and moral, and so it must be about 
religion. But we can all love each other and say, ‘ Our Father.’ ” 

I have another letter of October 1852. It is dated Manches- 
ter, Liverpool, Alderley, Kensington, Covent Garden. “I am 
writing this at the station, having missed the quick train, and 
not sorry to have half-an-hour to myself and my dearest girls. 
I have just said good-bye to Manchester, and stopped this morn- 
ing to hear Mr. Scott address his College, of which he is Prin- 
cipal. A gentleman, a Mr. Owen, left a hundred thousand 
pounds to found an institution for educating his townsfolk, and 
Scott is the first head of the College, and a very noble speech I 
thought he made to his boys and young men, and I wished I 
was a boy myself that I might learn something, but I am too 


xxxvi ESMOND AN I) T HE LECTURES 

old a boy to learn niucli now, I fear. Yon two must try and 
do so, and when yon are at work, work witli all your heart, and 
don’t play with learning.” 

He sailed for America from Liverpool on October 30th by the 
Canada, Captain Lang. The house in Kensington was shut up. 
His publishers gave him a despatch-box, his mother sent him a 
lifebelt, and made him promise not to leave it behind. We 
were all very anxious and sad, but very glad he did not go 
alone: Mr. Eyre Crowe went with him as secretary. “Six 
months tumbling about the world will do you no harm,” he 
wrote, offering the post to his young friend. As the steamer 
was starting, a messenger ^arrived on board with letters from 
Messrs. Smith and Elder and the first copy of “ Esmond.” 

One of the farewell notes was addressed to Dr. John Brown* 
of Edinburgh. 

W. M. Thackeray to Dr. John Brown, M.D. 

“ 85 Renshaw Street, Liverpool, 

“ Wednesday , October 6 (1852). 

“ My dear Brown, — Your constant kindness deserves, not 
more good will on my part, for that you have, but better marks 
of friendship than my laziness is inclined to show. My time is 
drawing near for the ingens aequor. I have taken places for 
self and Crowe, Junior, by the Canada, which departs on the 
30th of this month, a Saturday, and all you who pray for trav- 
ellers by land and water (if you do pray in your Scotch Church) 
are entreated to offer up supplications for me. I don’t like go- 
ing out at all ; have dismal presentiments sometimes, but the 
right thing is to go ; and the pleasant one will be to come back 
again with a little money for the young ladies. I hope to send 
you ‘ Esmond ’ before I sail ; if not, it will follow me as a legacy. 
I doubt whether it will be popular, although it has cost me so 
much trouble. 

“ I wish this place were like Edinburgh, but I only get a 
small audience, say 300, in a hall capable of holding 3000 at 
least, and all the papers will cry out at the- smallness of the 

*It is Dr. John Brown’s son who with a traditional kindness has sent me 
the correspondence to quote from. 


I N T R O D IT C T 1 0 N 


XXXVll 


attendance. At Manchester the audience isn’t greater, but looks 
greater, or the room is small, and though pecuniarily the affair 
is a failure, it is not so really ; I air my reputation, and the 
people who do come seem to like what they hear hugely. 

“ Carlyle is away in Germany looking after ‘ Frederick the 
Great.’ I don’t know what Literature is about. I heard James 
Martineau (the Unitarian) last Sunday, and was struck by his 
lofty devotional spirit, and afterwards an old schoolfellow on 
the Evangelical dodge — ah, what rubbish ! and so is this which 
1 am writing. I think it is partly owing to an uncomfortable 
pen ; but with bad pen and good I am always yours and your 
wife’s, sincerely, W. M. T.” 

From Liverpool he wrote to Lady Stanley, “ Not above 200 
people come to the lectures, and the Philharmonic Hall, the 
most beautiful room I’ve seen, is made for 2500, so that the 
little audience shudders in the middle, and the lecturer stands 
in a vast empty orchestra, where there is a place for 150 musi- 
cians. It is like a dinner for twenty and three people to eat it. 
They go away and say unto each other what a good dinner and 
so forth, but 1 don’t think they’ll have the courage to come 
again. 

“ Who would like to be one of six in a theatre with a good 
actor performing a good douche for a man’s vanity? 

“ There is a Boston boat sails on the 30th of October, and 
that will be the steamer which will carry Titmarsh and his 
lectures.” 

Mr. Crowe describes the passengers on board the Canada. 
“ Lowell, fresh from Italy, coming up the companion-ladder ; 
and a burly form in a wideawake hat, Arthur Hugh Clough, 
the poet and Oxford Don. . . .” 

And here is the welcome letter which came to us at Paris 
from the other side of the Atlantic. 

“ I try to write a little with a pencil,” says my father, “ now 
the troubles of sea-sickness are over, the appetite come back, and 
the sky bright overhead ; the sea of a wonderful purple, except 
in the wake of the ship, where there quivers a long line of em- 
erald ; six sea-gulls are following after the ship, six hundred 
miles— think of that! Nobody really likes the sea; they go 


xxxviii ESMOND AND T il E LECTURES 


througli witli it with a brave heart, but the captain and all like 
the fireside and home a thousand times better. ... I find the 
vessel pitches so I can’t write, and my sentences lurch about 
and grasp hold of anything to support themselves, so I’ll stop. 
. . . In that horrid little cabin below, where we are tumbling 
and rolling, and bumping and creaking in the roaring black 
midnight, you may be sure I am often thinking of you. I know 
you look at the sky, and G. P.'^ at the glass (I don’t mean the 
looking-glass), and speculate how the Canada makes way. Well, 
we have had the wind dead against us, and got on well in spite 
of it, and are now some eleven hundred miles out at sea, lat. 
50° 32', Ion. 27° 36'. I was trying as I lay awake last night to 
see if I could understand the difference between latitude and 
longitude. . . . 

“ This morning, as I was full in a dream about A. and M. 
eating a pot of bear’s grease and mistaking it for jam, the Ad- 
rpiralty agent wakes me to come and see the sun rise. Such a 
royal apparition ! To see such sights with the eyes is to pray 
with the heart. . . . We have had a tolerable bad passage, wind 
against us all the way ; even against that, except in the very 
bad weather, running ten miles an hour. Isn’t it wonderful? 
Instead of going over yon thundering wave, why don’t we go 
right down and disappear? Looking at the little lifebelt and 
then at the ocean makes one laugh. The waves are immense ; 
about four of them go to the horizon, but I’m disappointed in 
the grandeur of the prospect. It looks small somehow, not 
near so extensive as a hundred landscapes we have seen. And 
where shall we pass next November ? Shall we go to Rome ? 
Shall I make a good bit of money in America, and write a book 
about it? I think not. It seems impudent to write a book, 
and mere sketches now are somehow below my rank in the 
world — I mean, a grave old gentleman, father of young ladies, 
mustn’t be comic and grinning too much. I wonder are the 
critics praising or abusing ‘Esmond’? I have forgotten all 
about him, and he seems like everything else, to have happened 
a hundred years ago. . . .” 

“ How wonderful the thing is that we should be here at all,” 
* This was always my father’s abbreviation for “ Grand Papa.” 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXIX 


he writes in another letter. “ On Tuesday evening, at about 
half-past five, the captain goes on deck from dinner and sends 
a sailor aloft to look out. Sailor comes down and says he can 
see nothing. The minute after captain sends him up again. 
Again sailor sees nothing. Captain sends him up a third time. 
He sees Beaver Island light ; so that we come three thousand 
miles over the enormous pathless ocean, through storm and 
darkness, with many a day no sun to make observations by, 
and the captain knows within fifteen minutes when we shall see 
a particular little rock with a light on it. Seven hours after- 
wards the ship came close up to the quay at Halifax, as if there 
had been a rope pulling us all the way from Liverpool. And 
so the voyage ends with a laus Deo.'^ 

One of the first welcomes he received on landing was from 
Mr. Prescott, with whom he dined the first Sunday at Boston. 
The next host to receive him, when he reached New York, was 
Mr. Henry James, the father of the good friend of these present 
days, who has told me that he can remember going as a little 
boy to the hotel where our lecturer was staying in New York, 
and watching Mr. Crowe at work upon a portrait of his own 
father. All the national, well-known names follow in succes- 
sion — Washington Irving and Dana and Horace Greeley and 
George Curtis and Bayard Taylor and others less known to the 
outer world, but familiarly quoted in our home, such as Mrs. 
Baxter and her daughters, for whom my father ever had a 
special affection. 

The first letter from New York begins with a cheerful, “Now 
that I am here comfortably settled with a hundred kind people 
to make your papa welcome, and two thousand every night to 
come and hear his lectures, doesn’t it seem absurd that we 
should all have been so gloomy, and foreboding so many evils 
at my going away ? . . . 

“ We are up three pairs of stairs, in very snug rooms, at a 
very good hotel. The people have not turned out with flags 
and drums to receive me like Dickens, but the welcome is a 
most pleasant one. There is no speechifying or ceremony in it 
— everybody has read Somebody’s book.” 


xl 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


W. M. T. to Mrs. Procter. 

“Boston, Wednesday^ December 22, 1852. 

“ My dear Friend, — I should like to send you a longer letter 
than can be written in a quarter of an hour, when the mails 
close for the ship, which is on the slips to start for dear old 
home, but a word I know will please you to tell you how happy 
I am, what a many many friends I have found (I have found 
Beatrix Esmond and lost my heart to her), and what a fortunate 
venture this is likely to prove to me. Last night was the first 
lecture here — twelve hundred people, I should think — and I left 
behind me near a thousand pounds at New York, wdiich Bar- 
ing’s house will invest for me, so that my girls will be very 
considerably the better for this journey. 

And grim Death if ever he come to me. 

Will find that I have the £, s. d. 

There’s a parody ! I find I’m constantly talking of dying 
somehow, but hope to wait time enough to see the poor wife 
and children provided. It would have been worth while even 
for my books to come out here : the publishers are liberal 
enough, and will be still more so with any future thing I may 
do. As for writing about this country, about Goshen, about 
Canada flowing with milk and honey, about the friends I have 
found here, and who are helping me to procure independence 
for my children, if I cut jokes against them, may I choke on 
the instant. If I can say anything to show that my name is 
really Makepeace, and to increase the source of love between 
the two countries, then please God I will. The laugh dies out 
as we get old, you see, but the love and the truth don’t, praised 
be God! and I begin to think of the responsibilities of this here 
pen now writing to you with a feeling of no small awe. The 
first name I heard in the railroad going hence to New York was 
my own, by a pretty child selling books, and I was touched 
somehow by his fresh voice and kind face, and should have 
liked to take him by the hand. So — here it is after fifteen 
years, think 1, here’s the fame they talk about: my impression 
though was one of awe and humility rather than exultation, and 
to pray God I might keep honest and tell truth always. 

“This is nothing but Ego, but I know you like that. I was 


1 N T R O 1 ) U C T 1 0 N 


xli 


very glad to get your letter. God bless you, and all yours, and 
my dear old Dicky Doyle when you see him. The success of 
‘ Esmond ’ has quite surprised me, for 1 only looked for a few 
to like it. 

“ Write again to Appleton, New York, please, to yours affec- 
tionately, W. M. T.” 

The little memorandum-book for 1852-53 gives the history 
of these eventful days ; that much of a history that can best be 
told by names and dates, from which, as from the notes of a 
music-book, the tune of the past can be played once more. 
There is a list of places and lectures all the way from Boston to 
Savannah, and from Savannah to England again, and the names 
of the hospitable people with whom my father chiefly spent his 
time, with the dates of their hospitable entertainments. All 
noted in their turn, with the names of our old friend Mr. Synge, 
and Mr. Crampton, and Governor Fish, and many others. 

One of Mr. Lowell’s charming little invitations has been pre- 
served : — 

“ Cambridge, 30/4 December . 

“ My dear Sir, — Have you any engagement for Wednesday 
or Thursday evening of next week? If not, will you give me 
one of them ? Timmins, revolving many things, has decided on 
a supper^ because he can have it under his owm roof, and because 
he can have more pleasant people at it. He will ask only cluh- 
hahle men, and such as can’t make speeches. You shall either be 
carried back to Boston, or spend the night with us. Crowe 
survived it. — Very sincerely yours, J. R. Lowell.” 

“ Mr. Prescott, the historian, is delightful,” my father wrote 
from Boston ; “ Mr. Ticknor is a great city magnate and littera- 
teur. It’s like the society of a rich Cathedral-town in England 
grave and decorous, and very pleasant and well read.” 

One of the first of the lectures was delivered in a Unitarian 
Chapel. My father was rather nervous when he found he was 
expected to mount the pulpit, and asked whether the organ 
would strike up when he entered. He not only gave lectures, 
but attended them. Bancroft was lecturing at that time 5 so 
was Theodore Parker, the eloquent anti-slavery champion ; so 
was Mr. Home, whose rapping manifestations were then coming 


xlii 


ESMOND AND THE LECTUKES 


into vogue. We have one or two scraps pasted into an Ameri- 
can scrap-book, with various mysterious messages like telegrams 
from the unseen world, “ / merely wished to say Make-peace you 
argue of importance'^ This oracle is dated December 1852. 
Here is another revelation, “ Carissima may move the table." 
One of the messages on the same page may be spiritual, but it 
rather reminds one of common life. “ Please deliver to W. M. 
Thackeray, Esq. a hat or a cap as he may wish, and 'place the same 
to the account of John N. Genin, 214 Broadway." A stamp in 
the corner with Genin, Broadway, New York, and the picture of 
a very tall hat, gives authority to tlie document. 

A letter to Lady Stanley, written from Philadelphia, sums up 
his first impressions : — 

January '‘l\, 1853 , 

“ All those fine plans of writing letters, which my friends were 
to keep and restore to me, and of which I was to make a book 
on my return home, are of no avail. I can’t see the country, I 
can’t write any letters; the business I am on prevents the one 
and the other. I am making and receiving visits all day long, 
going out to dinner and supper prodigiously, and perfectly drunk 
with the number of new acquaintances poured into me. I trem- 
ble as I walk the streets here, lest every man I meet is my friend 
of last night, who will be offended of course if I forget him. It 
is like a man canvassing, but the canvass begins afresh in every 
new city, and goes on till I am perfectly weary of shaking hands 
and acting. Do you know that there are over five hundred 
thousand inhabitants in this town ? The great impression I have 
got in going about is how small and dwindled the old country is, 
and how great and strong the new. Here I must go, Mr. 
M‘Michael of the North American Enquirer is below. 

“ It is two hours afterwards. M‘Michael and I have been to 
the Mint (shake hands with everybody), which is a beautiful in- 
stitution, of which the Philadelphians have a right to be proud, 
to the Free School (shake hands with all the professors), a 
capital school too, seemingly, where the youngest boys know 
much more than I do, where it is a good thing to think small 
beer of oneself, comparing one’s own ignorance with the knowl- 
edge of these little ones. I am making money pretty well, and 
have put by already nearly two thousand pounds since I have 


I N T R 0 D U C T 1 0 N 


xliii 


been here ; and do you know that the common interest here is 
eight per cent., as safe as Englisli Funds, they tell me? ... I 
hope to make nearly double what I have before I bend my steps 
homeward, and then shall get ready some fresh lectures for a 
new campaign. They will bear me over again in this country, 
and like me, I believe. I have nothing but praise and kindness, 
except from some of the Boston papers, who fired into me, and 
said I was a humbug. But Boston is the centre of lecturing ; 
lecturers go out thence to all quarters of the Union, lecturers 
who only get one dollar to my ten, and who are at least quite 
as good as I am, hence animosities and natural heart-burnings ; 
and I don’t care, so long as the reason is with them, and the 
dollars with me. I find wonderfully little difference in manners, 
an accent hot quite like ours ; but why should it be ? Why 
should not Jordan be as good as Abana and Pharpar, rivers of 
Damascus ? Even the dress of the New York girls, which struck 
me as odious at first on account of their splendaciousness, I think 
now quite handsome. I have found kind matrons and pretty 
girls everywhere, and in Boston very good, fogeyfied, literary 
society, with everywhere a love for the old country quite cu- 
rious, nay, touching, to remark. They are great about pronunci- 
ation especially, and take down at my lectures words which this 
present arbiter of English pronounces differently to them. If 
Carlyle comes, 1 wonder whether they will take him as an ex- 
emplar. Crowe is my comfort and delight in life ; he is worth 
his weight in gold. Everybody lectures in this country, and it 
isn’t, nor any trade or calling else, for that matter, thought infra 
dig. Nor is a man thought the worse of for showing a little in- 
dependence. For instance, when I came here they told me it 
was usual for lecturers (Mr. B. of London had done it) to call 
upon all the editors of all the papers, hat in hand, and ask them 
to puff my lectures. Says 1, ‘ I’ll see them all . . .,’ here I used 
a strong expression, which you will find in the Athanasian Creed. 
Well, they were pleased rather than otherwise, and now the 
papers are puffing me so as to make me blush.” 

After Philadelphia, where Mr. Reid made the travellers at 
home, came Baltimore and Washington, and “ an interminable 
succession of balls, parties, banquets at the British Embassy and 


xliv ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


elsewhere.” Sir John Crampton was ambassador in those days, 
President Fillmore was at the White House, and for three weeks 
lecturing and hospitality alternated. Then they took steamer 
to Richmond. “I sketched the distant outline of Mr. Wash- 
ington’s home,” says Mr. Crowe, “ and we tried to spot the new 
Castlewood, which was raised on the beautiful banks of the 
Potomac.” 

Brief records of Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah follow 
in my father’s little diary : “ Calm passage, pleasant boat, river 
like the Nile. Quitted the horrible hotel for Mr. Low’s pleas- 
ant house. On Tuesday the 15th of March drove to Bon A vent- 
ure and Mr. Faversham’s estate. Negro houses, moss on the 
trees, yellow jessamine, splendid magnolia. First lecture about 
360, 1 should think. I read in the papers of snow twelve inches 
thick falling in New England ; here all windows open, peach- 
trees in most ‘ lubly ’ blossom, leaves coming out, fresh salad for 
dinner, balmy air blowing.” 

On Saturday the 19th March he wrote to us: “Yesterday 
your papa performed for the first time in a theatre — who would 
ever have thought of seeing him on a stage ? The room where 
I generally act is engaged, and I had such a dirty little theatre 
instead. The proceeds for the three lectures are about the 
smallest I shall get in the States, but it is only a little place — a 
friendly, pretty little place — and Mr. Low, my host, has made 
me and Eyre as comfortable as mortal man could be in this hot 
weather. It doesn’t agree with me, I think, and I am glad I 
am going out of these enervating damp climates. I wish you 
could have seen a little negrillo of five years old toddling about 
with the plates at dinner yesterday, and listening to the young 
ladies making music afterwards.” 

“ Providence has proved rather a failure,” he wrote from that 
place after the first lecture. “ There are not above 500 auditors, 
and I must return half the money we agreed for. Nobody must 
lose money by me in America, where I have had such a wel- 
come and hospitality.” 

He says in a letter to Dr. Brown : — 

“ Charlestown, 25, 1853. 

“The lectures do pretty well, and I have laid by already. 
This will make me easy against the day when work will he over, 


INTRODUCTION 


xlv 


and then and then who knows what fate will bring. The idle- 
ness of the life is dreary and demoralising though, and the 
bore and humiliation of delivering these stale old lectures is 
growing intolerable. Why, what a superior heroism is Albert 
Smith’s, who has ascended Mont Blanc 400 times ! 

“ It’s all exaggeration about this country — barbarism, eccen- 
tricities, nigger cruelties, and all. They are not so highly educated 
as individuals, but a circle of people knows more than an equal 
number of English (of Scotch I don’t say — there, in Edinburgh 
you are educated).” 

By April he was back in New York. Mr. George Smith has 
given me some letters dated from the Clarendon, New York. 
“We have had a very pleasant and not unprofitable tour in the 
South,” my father dictates. “ The words are the words of 
Thackeray, but the pen is the pen of Crowe. The former is 
boiling himself in a warm bath, and is, whether in or out of hot 
water, yours very faithfully always. . . .” 

The following amusing little jeu d'esprit appeared in the Bos- 
ton Post, and is pasted into the American scrap-book : “ High 
Life in Boston : Literary Breakfast of a family of opulence mov- 
ing in a select circle, residing in a select square. 

“ Clever Daughter. Decidedly I esteem Mr. Thackeray, the 
fort esprit of his time : strongly resembling Bussy de Rabutin, 
but with a more introspective cast. He reminds one constantly 
of the subtle companion of Faust : no moral obliquity without 
its palliative, no human weakness without a claim to a tender 
extenuation. We learn to love the vice, but hate the sinner ; 
I would say, hate the sinner and love the vice — vice-versa. 

“ Sentimental Do.ughter. I’m sure I wish I had been born in 
Queen Anne’s day, when all the gentlemen were so enthusiastic, 
and wore red cloaks and green stockings. They seem to have 
had such a ceaseless flow of spirits. 

“ Pert Son. Well, they didn’t have anything else. 

“ Gruff Papa. A pack of d — d scamps as ever ’scaped hang- 
ing. If I’d had any idea of such characters being raked up at a 
lecture in Boston, no son or daughter of mine should have set 
foot in the hall, ‘ if they grew up ever so ignorant.’ 

“ Clever Girl. But, dear papa, genius is ever eccentric : can- 


xlvi 


ESMOND AND THE LECTURES 


not be cabin’d, cribb’d, confined to ordinary limits. Their 
‘ noble rage ’ will burst out, and, like the Pythian priestess, they 
are borne away by the afflatus of the tripod. Byron had his 
faults, but^ 

“ Silly Mamma to Gruff Papa. I’m sure, my love, Mr. 
Thackeray has made a decidedly favourable impression on our 
most fashionable people : which could not have happened if 
these authors really were to blame in their behaviour. If it 
was the fashion to be ‘gay,’ and to be carried about in chairs, 
it was not their fault, but that of their rulers. . . . 

“ Fossil Grandmother (timidly). Mr. Thackeray ought to be 
spoken to — dispassionately.” 



In 1855 my father returned to America and delivered the 
second series of his lectures, “ The Four Georges,” which for 
convenience are bound up with the Humourists in this present 
volume. 

The American letters which he wrote during his second visit 
are included in the preface to “ The Virginians,” and are alto- 
gether omitted here. 


A. I. R. 


THE HISTORY 


OF 

HENHY ESMOND, Esq. 

A COLONEL IN THE SERVICE OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ANNE 


WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 


. , . SERVETUU AD IMUM 

QUALIS AB INCERTO PROCESSERIT, ET SIBI C'OJJSTET 







f 


r': 

(V'' 


Ty: 




■ ': ■. ■.../ ■■ \ 
I / • . - I 



.i^r4'< 








TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 


WILLIAM BINGHAM, LORD ASHBURTON 

M y dear lord, — T he writer of a book which copies the 
manners and language of Queen Anne’s time, must not omit 
the Dedication to the Patron ; and I ask leave to inscribe 
this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great kindness 
and friendship which I owe to you and yours. 

My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage 
to a country where your name is as well known as here. Wherever 
I am, I shall gratefully regard you ; and shall not be the less 
welcomed in America because I am 

Your obliged friend and servant, 

W. M. THACKERAY. 


London : October 18 , 1852 , 




■ '.I 

;:i!r ‘ A'. ' " 

iiHi' ) .wu.rifMM ii' • i.i 

w, h».^4«4... .’•■(,(» &:' « ,.> ■ ::hp ■- 1' J 

\ '■ :_ay.,/rl ^ W'nW-l / ■<■ '_3 

‘ •.» '.'.t -.., . -■. /.^u.’j tf..it^{i>? 

‘-.:u. Icj:'; ‘ V‘' •*’:* 'f <f vr/r 1 j?^ ™ 

.;;r:: .|| 

r iw<r u;> »," :4i. ♦tfjd' fl'/^ , 1 1 

III : Ai; ti j '''*' *''• ^i|i V- v'lafl 

-jd <!»•' -i* .'tufi i|| 

»;,>jt v,n' ;ifS ' 'jK 





PIIEFACE 


THE ESMONDS 'OF VIRGINIA 



HE estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, which was given to our 


ancestors by King Charles the First, as some return for the 


sacrifices made in His Majesty’s cause by the Esmond family, 
lies in Westmoreland county, between the rivers Potomac and 
Rappahannoc, and was once as great as an English Principality, 
though in the early times its revenues were but small. Indeed, 
for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed them, our 
plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched themselves 
one after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of tobacco were 
all the produce that, for long after the Restoration, our family re- 
ceived from their Virginian estates. 

My dear and honoured father. Colonel Henry Esmond, whose 
history, written by himself, is contained in the accompanying 
volume, came to Virginia in the year 1718, built his house of 
Castlewood, and here permanently settled. After a long stormy 
life in England, he passed the remainder of his many years in peace 
and honour in this country ; how beloved and respected by all his 
fellow-citizens, how inexpressibly dear to his family, I need not 
say. His whole life was a benefit to all who were connected with 
him. He gave the best example, the best advice, the most bounteous 
hospitality to his friends ; the tenderest care to his dependants ; 
and bestowed on those of his immediate family such a blessing of 
fatherly love and protection as can never be thought of, by us at 
least, without veneration and thankfulness ; and my sons’ children, 
whether established here in our Republic, or at home in the always 
beloved mother country, from which our late quarrel hath separated 
us, may surely be proud to be descended from one who in all ways 
was so truly noble. 

My dear mother died in 1736, soon after our return from 
England, whither my parents took me for my education ; and 
where I made the acquaintance of Mr. Warrington, whom my 


6 


PREFACE 


children never saw. When it pleased Heaven, in the bloom of 
his youth, and after but a few months of a most happy union, to 
remove him from me, I owed my recovery from the grief which 
that calamity caused me, mainly to my dearest father’s tenderness, 
and then to the blessing vouchsafed to me in the birth of my two 
beloved boys. I know the fatal differences which separated them 
in politics never disunited their hearts ; and as I can love them 
both, whether wearing the King’s colours or the Republic’s, I am 
sure that they love me and one another, and him above all, my 
father and theirs, the dearest friend of their childhood, the noble 
gentleman who bred them from their infancy in the practice and 
knowledge of Truth, and Love, and Honour. 

My children will never forget the appearance and figure of 
their revered grandfather ; and I wish I possessed the art of 
drawing (which my papa had in perfection), so that I could leave 
to our descendants a portrait of one who was so good and so 
respected. My father was of a dark complexion, with a very 
great forehead and dark hazel eyes, overhung by eyebrows which 
remained black long after his hair w^as white. His nose was 
aquiline, his smile extraordinary sweet. How well I remember 
it, and how little any description I can write can recall his image ! 
He was of rather low stature, not being above five feet seven inches 
in height ; he used to laugh at my sons, whom he called his 
crutches, and say they were grown too tall for him to lean upon. 
But small as he was, he had a perfect grace and majesty of deport- 
ment, such as I have never seen in this country, except perhaps in 
our friend Mr. Washington, and commanded respect wherever he 
appeared. 

In all bodily exercises he excelled, and showed an extraordinary 
quickness and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made 
my two boys proficient in that art ; so much so that when the 
French came to this country with Monsieur Rochambeau, not one 
of his officers was superior to my Henry, and he was not the equal 
of my poor George, who had taken the King’s side in our lamentable 
but glorious War of Independence. 

Neither my father nor my mother ever wore powder in their 
hair ; both their heads were as white as silver, as I can remember 
them. My dear mother possessed to the last an extraordinary 
brightness and freshness of complexion ; nor would people believe 
that she did not wear rouge. At sixty years of age she still looked 
young, and was quite agile. It was not until after that dreadfid 
siege of our house by the Indians, which left me a widow ere I was 
a mother, that my dear mother’s health broke. She never recovered 
her terror and anxiety of those days, which ended so fatally for me. 


PREFACE 7 

then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my father’s arms 
ere my own year of widowhood was over. 

From that day, until the last of his dear and honoured life, it 
was my delight and consolation to remain witli him as his comforter 
and companion ; and from those little notes which my mother hath 
made here and there in the volume in which my father describes his 
adventures in Europe, I can well understand the extreme devotion 
with which she regarded him — a devotion so passionate and exclu- 
sive as to prevent her, I think, from loving any other person except 
with an inferior regard ; her whole thoughts being centred on this 
one object of affection and worship. I know that, before her, my 
dear father did not show the love which he had for his daughter ; 
and in her last and most sacred moments, this dear and tender 
parent owned to me her repentance that she had not loved me 
enough ; her jealousy even that my father should give his affection 
to any but herself ; and in the most fond and beautiful words of 
affection and admonition, she bade me never to leave him, and to 
supply the place which she was quitting. With a clear conscience, 
and a heart inexpressibly thankful, I think I can say that I fulfilled 
those dying commands, and that until his last hour my dearest 
father never had to complain that his daughter’s love and fidelity 
failed him. 

And it is since I knew him entirely — for during my mother’s 
life he never quite opened himself to me — since I knew the value 
and splendour of that affection which he bestowed upon me, that I 
have come to understand and pardon what, I own, used to anger 
me in my mother’s lifetime, her jealousy respecting her husband’s 
love. ’Twas a gift so precious, that no wonder she who had it was 
for keeping it all, and could part with none of it, even to her 
daughter. 

Though I never heard my father use a rough word, ’twas extra- 
ordinary with how much awe his people regarded him ; and the 
servants on our plantation, both those assigned from England and 
the purchased negroes, obeyed him with an eagerness such as the 
most severe taskmasters round about us could never get from their 
people. He was never familiar, though perfectly simple and natural ; 
he was the same with the meanest man as with the greatest, and 
as courteous to a black slave girl as to the Governor’s wife. No 
one ever thought of taking a liberty with him (except once a tipsy 
gentleman from York, and I am bound to own that my papa never 
forgave him) : he set the humblest people at once on their ease with 
liim, and brought down the most arrogant by a grave satiric way, 
which made persons exceedingly afraid of him. His courtesy was 
not put on like a Sunday suit, and laid by when the company went 


8 


PREFACE 


away ; it was always the same ; as he was always dressed the same, 
whether for a dinner by ourselves or for a great entertainment. 
They say he liked to be the first in his company ; but what com- 
pany was there in which he would not be first 1 When I went to 
Europe for my education, and we passed a winter at London with 
my half-brother, my Lonl Castlewood and his second lady, I saw at 
Her Majesty’s Court some of the most famous gentlemen of those 
days ; and I thought to myself none of these are better than my 
papa ; and the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who came to us from 
Dawley, said as much and that the men of that time were not like 
those of his youth “ Were your father, madam,” he said, “ to go 
into the woods, the Indians would elect him Sachem ; ” and his 
Lordship was pleased to call me Pocahontas. 

I did not see our other relative. Bishop Tusher’s lady, of whom 
so much is said in my papa’s memoirs — although my mamma went 
to visit her in the country. I have no pride (as I showed by com- 
plying with my mother’s request, and marrying a gentleman who was 
but the younger son of a Suffolk Baronet), yet I own to a decent 
respect for my name, and wonder how one who ever bore it should 
change it for that of Mrs. Thomas Tusher. I pass over as odious 
and unworthy of credit those reports (which I heard in Europe, and 
was then too young to understand), how this person, liaviiig left her 
family and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of the Pretender, betrayed 
his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George’s Ambassador, and nearly 
caused the Prince’s death there ; how she came to England and 
married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favourite of King 
George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a Dean, and 
then a Bishop. I did not see the lady, who chose to remain at her 
jmlace all the time we were in London ; but after visiting her, my 
j)oor mamma said she had lost all her good looks, and warned me 
not to set too much store by any such gifts which nature had 
bestowed upon me. She grew exceedingly stout ; and I remember 
my brother’s wife. Lady Castlewood, saying: “No wonder she 
became a favourite, for the King likes them old and ugly, as his 
fiither did before him.” On which Papa said : “ All women were 
alike ; that there was never one so beautiful as that one ; and that 
we could forgive her everything but her beauty.” And hereupon 
my mamma looked vexed, and my Lord Castlewood began to laugh ; 
and I, of course, being a young creature, could not understand what 
was the subject of their conversation. 

After the circumstances narrated in the third book of these 
Memoirs, my father and mother both went abroad, being advised 
by their friends to leave the country in consequence of the trans- 
actions which are recounted at the close of the volume of the 


PREFACE 


9 

Memoirs. But my hr(Ulier, lieariiig how the future Bishop's lady 
had quitted Castlewood and joined the Pretender at Paris, i)ursued 
him, and would have killed liim, Prince as he was, had not the 
Prince managed to make his escaj^e. On his expedition to Scotland 
directly after, Castlewood was so enraged against him that he asked 
leave to serve as a volunteer, and join the Duke of Argyle’s army 
in Scotland, which the Pretender never had the courage to face ; 
and thenceforth my Lord was quite reconciled to the present reigning 
family, from whom he hath even received promotion. 

Mrs. Tusher was by this time as angry against the Pretender as 
any of her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, 
that she not only brought back my Lord to the Church of England, 
but procured the English peerage for him, which i\\e junioi' branch 
of our family at present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir 
Robert Walpole, and would not rest until her husband slept at Lam- 
beth, my papa used laughing to say. However, the Bishop died of 
apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected a great monument over 
him ; and the pair sleep under that stone, with a canopy of marble 
clouds and angels above them — the first Mrs. Tusher lying sixty 
miles off at Castlewood. 

But my papa’s genius and education are both greater than any 
a woman can be expected to have, and his adventures in Europe far 
more exciting than his life in this country, which was passed in the 
tranquil offices of love and duty ; and I shall say no more by way 
of introduction to his Memoirs, nor keep my children from the 
perusal of a story which is much more interesting than that of their 
affectionate old mother, 

RACHEL ESMOND WARRINGTON. 


Castlewood, Virginia : 
November 3 , 1778 . 



THE HISTORY OF 


HENRY ESMOND 

BOOK I 

THE EAKLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME 
OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE 

T he actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics 
to a time, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts 
and a great head-dress. ’Twas thought the dignity of the 
Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to 
move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her 
children to a slow music : and King Agamemnon perished in a dying 
fall (to use Mr. Dryden’s words) : the Chorus standing by in a set 
attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of 
those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath encumbered 
herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of tlie Theatre. She 
too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She 
too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings ; waiting 
on them obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of 
court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the 
affairs of the common people. I have seen in his very old age and 
decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type 
and model of kinghood — who never moved but to measure, who 
lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting 
in enacting through life the part of Hero ; and, divested of poetry, 
this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a 
great periwig and red heels to make him look tall — a hero for a 
book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god 
in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame 
Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, 
his surgeon ? I wonder shall History ever pull oft’ her periwig and 


12 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

cease to be court-ridden'? Shall we see something of hraiice and 
England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw Queen Anne at 
the latter j)lace tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, 
and driving her one-horse chaise — a hot, red-faced woman, not in 
the least resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back 
upon St. Paul’s, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. 
She was neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, tliough we 
knelt to hand her a letter or a washhand basin. Why shall History 
go on kneeling to the end of time ? I am for having her rise up 
off her knees, and take a natural posture : not to be for ever per- 
forming cringes and congees like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling 
backwards out of doors in the presence of the sovereign. In a 
word, I would have History familiar rather than heroic : and think 
that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children a much 
better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the 
Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get thence. 

There was a German officer of Webb’s, with whom we used to 
joke, and of whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was 
got to be believed in the army, that he was eldest son of the 
hereditary Grand Bootjack of the Empire, and the heir to that 
honour of which his ancestors had been very proud, having been 
kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, as they drew 
the boot from the other. I have heard that the old Lord Castle- 
wood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle, 
though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he 
served (and who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen 
English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post 
about the Court than of his ancestral honours, and valued his 
dignity (as Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King’s 
Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the thank- 
less and thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for 
King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, 
and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration : stood a 
siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated 
(afterward making terms with the Commonwealth, for which the 
elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother 
Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain 
on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as preacher and 
artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with the King 
whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad witli 
his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester 
fight. On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castle- 
wood fied from it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after 
the Restoration, never was away from the Court of the monarch 


OUR MOST RELIGIOUS KING 


13 


(for whose return we offer thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold 
his country and who took bribes of the French king. 

What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in 
exile? Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in mis- 
fortune ? Mr. Addison has painted such a figure in his noble piece 
of “ Cato.” But suppose fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern 
with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions 
of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill ; and the dignity of 
misfortune is straightway lost. The Historical Muse turns away 
shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door — on which 
tlie exile’s unpaid drink is scored up — upon liim and his pots and his 
pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. 
Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint 
him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impos- 
sible allegories : and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to 
claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that. 

About the King’s follower, the Viscount Castlewood — orphaned 
of his son, ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks 
of bravery, old and in exile — his kinsmen I suppose should be 
silent ; nor if this patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, 
and fetch passers-by to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What ! 
does a stream rush out of a mountain free and pure, to roll through 
fair pastures, to feed and throw out bright tributaries, and to end in 
a village gutter ? Lives that have noble commencements have often 
no better endings ; it is not without a kind of awe and reverence 
that an observer should speculate upon such careers as he traces the 
course of them. I have seen too much of success in life to take off 
my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt coach ; and would 
do my little part with my neighbours on foot, that they should not 
gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord 
Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House ? Is it 
poor Jack of Newgate’s procession, with the sheriff' and javelin-men, 
conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn ? I look into my heart 
and think that I am as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as 
bad as Tyburn Jack. ' Give me a chain and red gown and a pudding 
before me, and I could play^the part of Alderman very well, and 
sentence Jack after dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and honest 
people, educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on 
Hounslow Heath, with a purse before me, and I will take it. “ And 
I shall be deservedly hanged,” say you, wishing to put an end to 
this prosing. I don’t say No. I can’t but accept the world as I find 
it, including a rope’s end, as long as it is in fashion. 


CHAPTER I 


AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF 
CASTLE WOOD HALL 

W HEN Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his 
title, and presently after to take possession of his house 
of Castlewood, County Hants, in the year 1691, almost 
the only tenant of the place besides the domestics was a lad of 
twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to take any note until 
my Lady Viscountess lighted upon him, going over the house with 
the housekeeper on the day of her arrival. The boy was in the 
room known as the Book-room, or Yellow Gallery, where the por- 
traits of the family used to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir 
Antonio Van Dyck of George, second Viscount, and that by Mr. 
Dobson of my Lord the third Viscount, just deceased, which it seems 
his lady and widow did not think fit to carry away, when she sent 
for and carried off to her house at Chelsey, near to London, the 
picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in which her Ladyship was 
represented as a huntress of Diana’s court. 

The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad, lonely, 
little occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid 
down when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, know- 
ing who that person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, 
performing a shy obeisance to the mistress of his house. 

She stretched out her hand — indeed when was it that that hand 
would not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief * I 
and ill-fortune? “And this is our kinsman,” she said; “and what 
is your name, kinsman ? ” 

“My name is Henry Esmond,” said the lad, .looking up at her 
in a sort of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a 
Dea certe^ and appeared the most charming object he had ever 
looked on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun ; 
her complexion was of a dazzling bloom ; her lips smiling, and her 
eyes beaming with a kindness which made Harry Esmond’s heart 
to beat with surprise. 

“ His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my Lady,” says Mrs. 
Worksop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond 


FRIENDLESS, I FIND FRIENDS 15 

plagued more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked 
significantly towards the late lord’s picture, as it now is in the 
family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword, and 
his order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the 
war on the Danube against the Turk. 

Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait 
and the lad, the new Viscountess, who had still hold of the boy’s 
hand as she looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand 
quickly, and walked down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop. 

When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the 
same spot, and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it 
on his black coat. 

Her heart melted, I suppose (indeed, she hath since owned as 
much), at the notion that she should do anything unkind to any 
mortal, great or small ; for, when she returned, she had sent away 
the housekeeper upon an errand by the door at the farther end of 
the gallery ; and, coming back to the lad, with a look of infinite pity 
and tenderness in her eyes, she took his hand again, placing her other 
fair hand on his head, and saying some words to him, which were 
so kind, and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who had never 
looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a superior 
being or angel smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair 
protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very last hour of 
his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and looked, 
the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the beam of 
her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming 
in a smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair. 

As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind 
him a portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his 
hand. The gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her 
adorer, with his little queer figure, his sallow face and long black 
hair. The lady blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a 
look of appeal to her husband, for it was my Lord Viscount who 
now arrived, and whom the lad knew, having once before seen him 
in the late lord’s lifetime. 

“ So this is the little priest ! ” says my Lord, looking down at 
the lad. “ Welcome, kinsman ! ” 

“ He is saying his prayers to mamma,” says the little girl, who 
came up to her papa’s knees ; and my Lord Wrst out into another 
great laugh at this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He 
invented a half-dozen of speeches in reply, but ’twas months after- 
wards when he thought of this adventure : as it was, he had never 
a word in answer 

“ Le pauvre enfant, il n’a que nous,” says the lady, looking to 


16 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

her lord; and the boy, who understood her, thougli doubtles^ she 
thought otherwise, thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech. 

“ And he shan’t want for friends here,” says my Lord, in a 
kind voice, “ shall he, little Trix ? ” 

The little girl, whose name was Beatrix, and whom her papa 
called by this diminutive, looked at Henry Esmond solemnly, with 
a pair of large eyes, and then a smile shone over her face, which 
was as beautiful as that of a cherub, and she came up and put out 
a little hand to him. A keen and delightful pang of gratitude, 
happiness, affection, filled the orphan child’s heart as he received 
from the protectors, whom Heaven had sent to him, these touching 
words and tokens of friendliness and kindness. But an hour since 
he had felt quite alone in the world ; when he heard the great peal 
of bells from Castlewood church ringing that morning to welcome 
the arrival of the new lord and lady, it had rung only terror and 
anxiety to him, for he knew not how the new owner would deal 
with him ; and those to whom he formerly looked for protection 
were forgotten or dead. Pride and doubt too had kept him within- 
doors, when the Vicar and the people of the village, and the 
servants of the house, had gone out to welcome my Lord Castle- 
wood — for Henry Esmond was no servant, though a dependant; 
no relative, though he bore the name and inherited the blood of the 
house; and in the midst of the noise and acclamations attending 
the arrival of the new lord (for whom, you may be sure, a feast was 
got ready, and guns were fired, and tenants and domestics huzzahed 
when his carriage approached and rolled into the courtyard of the 
Hall), no one ever took any notice of young Henry Esmond, who 
sate unobserved and alone in the Book-room, until the afternoon of 
that day, when his new friends found him. 

When my Lord and Lady were going away thence, the little 
girl, still holding her kinsman by the hand, bade him to come too. 
“ Thou wilt always forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix,” says 
her father to her good-naturedly ; and went into the gallery, giving 
an arm to his lady. They passed thence through the music gallery, 
long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth’s Rooms, in the clock- 
tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset 
and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning ; and 
the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills 
beautiful to look at — and the little heir of Castlewood, a child of 
two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse’s arms, 
from whom he ran across the grass instantly he perceived his mother, 
and came to her. 

“ If thou canst not be happy here,” says my Lord, looking round 
at the scene, “thou art hard to please, Rachel.” 


DR. TUSHER, VICAR AND CHAPLAIN 17 

“ I am happy where you are,” she said, “ but we were happiest 
of all at Walcote Forest.” Then my Lord began to describe what 
was before them to his wife, and what indeed little Harry knew 
better than he — viz., the history of the house : how by yonder gate 
the page ran away with the heiress of Castlewood, by which the 
estate came into the present family ; how the Roundheads attacked 
the clock-tower, which my Lord’s father was slain in defending. 
“ I was but two years old then,” says he, “but take forty-six from 
ninety, and how old shall I be, kinsman Harry 1 ” 

“ Thirty,” says his wife, with a laugh. 

“ A great deal too old for you, Rachel,” answers my Lord, look- 
ing fondly down at her. Indeed she seemed to be a girl, and was 
at that time scarce twenty years old. 

“ You know, Frank, I will do anything to please you,” says she, 
“ and I promise you I will grow older every day.” 

■ “ You mustn’t call papa Frank ; you must call papa my Lord 
now,” says Miss Beatrix, with a toss of her little head ; at which 
the mother smiled, and the good-natured father laughed, and the 
little trotting boy laughed, not knowing why — but because he was 
happy, no doubt — as every one seemed to be there. How those 
trivial incidents and words, the landscape and sunshine, and the 
group of people smiling and talking, remain fixed on the memory ! 

As the sun was setting, the little heir was sent in the arms of 
his nurse to bed, whither he went howling; but little Trix was 
promised to sit to supper that night — “and you will come too, 
kinsman, won’t you ? ” she said. 

Harry Esmond blushed : “ I — I have supper with Mrs. Worksop,” 
says he. 

“D — n it,” says my Lord, “thou shalt sup with us, Harry, 
to-night ! Shan’t refuse a lady, shall he, Trix 1 ” — and they all 
wondered at Harry’s performance as a trencherman, in which 
character the poor boy acquitted himself very remarkably ; for the 
truth is he had had no dinner, nobody thinking of him in the bustle 
which the house was in, during the preparations antecedent to the 
new lord’s arrival. 

“No dinner ! poor dear child ! ” says my Lady, heaping up his 
plate with meat, and my Lord, filling a bumper for him, bade him 
call a health ; on which Master Harry, crying “ The King,” tossed 
off the wine. My Lord was ready to drink that, and most other 
toasts : indeed only too ready. He would not hear of Doctor 
Tusher (the Vicar of Castlewood, who came to supper) going away 
when the sweetmeats were brought : he had not had a chaplain long 
enough, he said, to be tired of him : so his reverence kept my Lord 
company for some hours over a pipe and a punch bowl ; and went 


18 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

away home with rather a reeling gait, and declaring a dozen of times, 
that his Lordship’s affability surpassed every kindness he had ever 
had from his Lordship’s gracious family. 

As for young Esmond, when he got to his little chamber, it was 
with a heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends 
whom this happy day had brought him. He was up and watching 
long before the house was astir, longing to see that fair lady and 
her children — that kind protector and patron ; and only fearful lest 
their welcome of the past night should in any way be withdrawn or 
altered. But presently little Beatrix came out into the garden, and | 
her mother followed, who greeted Harry as kindly as before. He | 
told her at greater length the histories of the house (which he had * 
been taught in the old lord’s time), and to which she listened with j 

great interest ; and then he told her, with respect to the night before, | 

that he understood French, and thanked her for her protection. | 

“ Do you ? ” says she, with a blush ; “ then, sir, you shall teach I 

me and Beatrix.” And she asked him many more questions re- I 

garding himself, which had best be told more fully and explicitly ! 

than in those brief replies which the lad made to his mistress’s ; 

questions. | 


CHAPTER II 


RELATES HO IV FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT 
CASTLEfVOOD 



IS known tliat tlie name of Esmond and the estate of Castle- 


wood, com. Hants, came into possession of the present family 


^ through Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and 
Marquis Esmond, and Lord of Castlewood, which lady married, 
23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent. ; the said Henry being then a page 
in the household of her father. Francis, son and heir of the 
above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name, which 
the family hath borne subsequently, was made Knight and Baronet 
by King James the First; and being of a military disposition, 
remained loiig in Germany with the Elector-Palatine, in whose 
service Sir Francis incurred both expense and danger, lending large 
sums of money to that unfortunate Prince ; and receiving many 
wounds in the battles against the Imperialists, in which Sir Francis 


engaged. 


On his return home Sir Francis was rewarded for his services 
and many sacrifices, by his late Majesty James the First, who 
graciously conferred upon this tried servant the post of Warden 
of the Butteries and Groom of the King’s Posset, which high and 
confidential office he filled in that king’s and his unhappy suc- 
cessor’s reign. 

His age, and many wounds and infirmities, obliged Sir Francis 
to perform much of his duty by deputy ; and his son. Sir George 
Esmond, knight and banneret, first as his father’s lieutenant, and 
afterwards as inheritor of his father’s title and dignity, performed 
this office during almost the whole of the reign of King Charles the 
First, and his two sons who succeeded him. 

Sir George Esmond married, rather beneath the rank that a 
person of his name and honour might aspire to, the daughter of 
Thos. Topham, of the city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, 
taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, 
disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the 
demise of his father-in-law, who devised his money to his second 
daughter, Barbara, a spinster. 


20 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Sir George Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his at- 
tachment and loyalty to the royal cause and person ; and the King 
being at Oxford in 1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, 
then very aged and infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, 
melted the whole of the family plate for his Majesty’s service. 

For this, and other sacrifices and merits, his Majesty, by patent 
under the Privy Seal, dated Oxford, Jan. 1643, was pleased to 
advance Sir Francis Esmond to the dignity of Viscount Castlewood, 
of Shandon, in Ireland : and the Viscount’s estate being much im- 
poverished by loans to the King, which in those troublesome times 
his Majesty could not repay, a grant of land in the plantations of 
Virginia was given to the Lord Viscount ; part of which land is 
in possession of descendants of his family to the present day. 

The first Viscount Castlewood died full of years, and within a 
few months after he had been advanced to his honours. He was 
succeeded by his eldest son, the before-named George ; and left 
issue besides, Thomas, a colonel in the King’s army, who afterwards 
joined the Usurper’s Government ; and Francis, in holy orders, 
who was slain whilst defending the House of Castlewood against 
the Parliament, anno 1647. 

George Lord Castlewood (the second Viscount), of King Charles 
the First’s time, had no male issue save his one son, Eustace 
Esmond, who was killed with half of the Castlewood men beside 
him, at Worcester fight. The lands about Castlewood were sold 
and apportioned to the Commonwealth-men ; Castlewood being 
concerned in almost all of the plots against the Protector, after the 
death of the King, and up to King Charles the Second’s restoration. 
My Lord followed that King’s Court about in its exile, having 
ruined himself in its service. He had but one daughter, who was 
of no great comfort to her father ; for misfortune had not taught 
those exiles sobriety of life ; and it is said that the Duke of York 
and his brother the King both quarrelled about Isabel Esmond. 
She was maid of honour to the Queen Henrietta Maria ; she early 
joined the Roman Church ; her father, a weak man, following her 
not long after at Breda. 

On the death of Eustace Esmond at Worcester, Thomas Esmond, 
nephew to my Lord Castlewood, and then a stripling, became heir 
to the title. His father had taken the Parliament side in the 
quarrels, and so had been estranged from the chief of his house ; 
and my Lord Castlewood was at first so much enraged to think 
that his title (albeit little more than an empty one now) should 
pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would have married again, 
and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner’s daughter at Bruges, to 
whom his Lordship owed a score for lodging when the King was 


21 


BOLD THOMAS ESMOND 

there, but for tear of tlie laughter of the Court, and the anger of his 
daughter, of whom he stood in awe ; for she was in temper as 
imperious and violent as my Lord, who was much enfeebled by 
wounds and drinking, was weak. 

Lord Castlewood would have had a match between his daughter 
Isabel and her cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was 
killed at Castlewood siege. And the lady, it was said, took a fancy 
to the young man, who was her junior by several years (which 
circumstance she did not consider to be a fault in him) ; but having 
paid his court, and being admitted to the intimacy of the house, he 
suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed to be pretty prosperous, 
without giving a pretext for his behaviour. His friends rallied him 
at what they laughingly chose to call his infidelity; Jack Churchill, 
Frank Esmond’s lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Foot-guards, 
getting the company which Esmond vacated, when he left the Court 
and went to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his promotion 
depended on the complaisance of his elderly aflianced bride. He 
and Churchill, who had been condiscipuli at St. Paul’s School, had 
words about this matter ; and Frank Esmond said to him with an 
oath, “Jack, your sister may be so-and-so, but by Jove my wife 
shan’t ! ” and swords were drawn, and blood drawn too, until friends 
separated them on this quarrel. Few men were so jealous about 
the point of honour in those days ; and gentlemen of good birth and 
lineage thought a royal blot was an ornament to their family coat. 
Frank Esmond retired in the sulks, first to Tangier, whence he 
returned after two years’ service, settling on a small property he 
had of his mother, near to Winchester, and became a country gentle- 
man, and kept a pack of beagles, and never came to Court again in 
King Charles’s time. But his uncle Castlewood was never reconciled 
to him ; nor, for some time afterwards, his cousin whom he had 
refused. 

By places, pensions, bounties from France, and gifts from the 
King, whilst his daughter was in favour. Lord Castlewood, who had 
spent in the Royal service his youth and fortune,* did not retrieve 
the latter quite, and never cared to visit Castlewood, or repair it, 
since the death of his son, but managed to keep a good house, and 
figure at Court, and to save a considerable sum of ready money. 

And now, his heir and nephew, Thomas Esmond, began to bid 
for his uncle’s favour. Thomas had served with the Emperor, and 
with the Dutch, when King Charles was compelled to lend troops 
to the States, and against them, when his Majesty made an alliance 
Avith the French King. In these campaigns Thomas Esmond was 
more remarked for duelling, brawling, vice, and play, than for any 
conspicuous gallantry in the field, and came back to England, like 


22 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

many another English gentleman who has travelled, with a character 
l)y no means improved l)y his foreign experience. He had dissipated 
his small paternal inheritance of a younger brother’s portion, and, 
as truth must be told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, 
and a brawler about Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him 
of a means of mending his fortune. 

His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody’s 
word but her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. 
She was lean, and yellow, and long in the tooth ; all the red and 
white in all the toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of 
her — Mr. Killigrew called her the Sibyl, the death’s-head put up at | 
the King’s feast as a memento mori, &c. — in fine, a woman who | 
might be easy of conquest, but whom only a very bold man would | 
think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas Esmond. He 
had a fancy to my Lord Castle wood’s savings, the amount of which 
rumour had very much exaggerated. Madame Isabel was said to 
have Royal jewels of great value ; whereas poor Tom Esmond’s last 
coat but one was in pawn. 

My Lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 
nigh to the Duke’s Theatre and the Portugal ambassador’s chapel. 
Tom Esmond, who had frequented the one, as long as he had money 
to spend among the actresses, now came to the church as assidu- 
ously. He looked so lean and shabby, that he passed without 
difficulty for a repentant sinner ; and so, becoming converted, you 
may be sure took his uncle’s priest for a director. 

This charitable Father reconciled him with the old lord his uncle, 
who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed 
under my Lord’s coach window, his Lordship going in state to his 
place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat 
and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard 
— to his twopenny ordinary in Bell Yard. 

Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very 
soon began to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good 
living and clean, linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be 
sure ; but he made amends on the other days : and, to show how 
great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing 
that fly-blown rank old morsel his cousin. There were endless 
jokes and lampoons about this marriage at Court : but Tom rode 
thither in his uncle’s coach now, called him father, and having won 
could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very shortly before 
King Charles died ; whom the Viscount of Castlewood speedily 
followed. 

The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents 
watched with an intense eagerness and care ; but who, in spite of 


WE ARE DISGRACED AT COURT 


nurses and physicians, had only a brief existence. His tainted 
blood did not run very long in his poor feeble little body. Symp- 
toms of evil broke out early on him ; and, part from flattery, part 
superstition, nothing would satisfy my Lord and Lady, especially 
the latter, but having the poor little cripple touched by his Majesty 
at his church. They were ready to cry out miracle at first (the 
doctors and quacksalvers being constantly in attendance on the 
child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every conceiv- 
able nostrum) — but though there seemed, from some reason, a 
notable amelioration in the infant’s health after his Majesty touched 
him, in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died — causing the 
lampooners of the Court to say, that the King, in expelling evil out 
of the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life 
out of it, which was nothing but corruption. 

The mother’s natural pang at losing this poor little child must 
have been increased when she thought of her rival Frank Esmond’s 
wife, who was a favourite of the whole Court, where my poor Lady 
Castlewood was neglected, and who had one child, a daughter, 
flourishing and beautiful, and was about to become a mother once 
more. 

The Court, as I have heard, only laughed the more because the 
poor lady, who had pretty well passed the age when ladies are 
accustomed to have children, nevertheless determined not to give 
hope up, and even when she came to live at Castlewood, was con- 
stantly sending over to Hexton for the doctor, and announcing to her 
friends the arrival of an heir. This absurdity of hers was one 
amongst many others which the wags used to play upon. Indeed, 
to the last days of her life, my Lady Viscountess had the comfort of 
fancying herself beautiful, and persisted in blooming up to the very 
midst of winter, painting roses on her cheeks long after their natural 
season, aiid attiring herself like summer though her head was covered 
wdth snow. 

Gentlemen who were about the .Court of King Charles, and King 
James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this 
queer old lady, with which it’s not necessary that posterity should 
be entertained. She is said to have had great powers of invective ; 
and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James’s favour, ’tis 
certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. 
She was a woman of an intrepid spirit, and, it appears, pursued and 
rather fatigued his Majesty with her rights and her wrongs. Some 
say that the cause of her leaving Court was jealousy of Frank 
Esmond’s wife ; others, that she was forced to retreat after a great 
battle which took place at Whitehall, between her Ladyship and 
Lady Dorchester, Tom Killigrew’s daughter, whom the King 


24 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


delighted to honour, and in which that ill-favoured Esther got the 
better of our elderly Vashti. But her Ladyship, for her part, 
always averred that it was her husbaiKrs quarrel, and not her 
own, which occasioned the banishment of the two into the country ; 
and the cruel ingratitude of the Sovereign in giving away, out of 
the family, that place of Warden of the Butteries and Groom, of 
the King’s Posset, which the two last Lords Castlewood had held 
so honourably, and which was now conferred upon a fellow of 
yesterday, and a hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature, my 
Lord Bergamot ; * “I never,” said my Lady, “ could have come to 
see his Majesty’s posset carried by any other hand than an Esmond. 
I should have dashed the salver out of Lord Bergamot’s hand, had 
I met him.” And those who knew her Ladyship are aware that 
she was a person quite capable of performing this feat, had she not 
wisely kept out of the way. 

Holding the purse-strings in her own control, to which, indeed, 
she liked to bring most persons who came near her. Lady Castle- 
wood could command her husband’s obedience, and so broke up 
her establishment at London ; she had removed from Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields to Chelsey, to a pretty new house she bought there; and 
brought her establishment, her maids, lapdogs, and gentlewomen, 
her priest, and his Lordship her husband, to Castlewood Hall, that 
she had never seen since she quitted it as a child with her father 
during the troubles of King Charles the First’s reign. The walls 
were still open in the old house as they had been left by the shot 
of the Commonwealth-men. A part of the mansion was restored 
and furbished up with the plate, hangings, and furniture brought 
from the house in London. My Lady meant to have a triumphal 
entry into Castlewood village, and expected the people to cheer 
as she drove over the Green in her great coach, my Lord beside 
her, her gentlewomen, lapdogs, and cockatoos on the opposite seat, 
six horses to her carriage, and servants armed and inounted follow- 
ing it and preceding it. But ’twas in the height of the No-Popery 
cry ; the folks in the village and the neighbouring town were scared 
by the sight of her Ladyship’s painted face and eyelids, as she 
bobbed her head out of the coach window, meaning, no doubt, to 
be very gracious ; and one old woman said, “ Lady Isabel ! lord-a- 
mercy, it’s Lady Jezebel ! ” a name by which the enemies of the 

* Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of 
the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries and Groom 
of the King’s Posset (on the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood), 
accompanied his Majesty to St. Germain’s, where he died without issue. No 
Groom of the Posset was appointed by the Prince of Orange, nor hath there been 
such an officer in any succeeding reign. 


SAYING OF LADY SARK 


25 


right honourable Viscountess were afterwards in the habit of desig- 
nating her. The country was then in a great No-Popery fervour; 
her Ladyship’s known conversion, and her husband’s, the priest in 
her train, and the service performed at the chapel of Gas tie wood 
(though the chapel had been built for that worship before any other 
wasjieard of in the country, and though the service was performed 
in the most quiet manner), got her no favour at first in the county 
or village. By far the greater part of the estate of Castlewood had 
been confiscated, and been parcelled out to Commonwealth-men. 
One or two of these old Cromwellian soldiers were still alive in the 
village, and looked grimly at first upon my Lady Viscountess, when 
she came to dwell there. 

She appeared at the Hexton Assembly, bringing her lord after 
her, scaring the country folks with the splendour of her diamonds, 
which she always wore in public. They said she wore them in 
private, too, and slept with them round her neck ; though the 
writer can pledge his w^ord that this was a calumny. “If she 
were to take them off,” my Lady Sark said, “Tom Esmond, her 
husband, would run away with them and pawn them.” ’Twas 
another calumny. My Lady Sark was also an exile from Court, 
and there had been Avar between the two ladies before. 

The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, 
AA^ho was generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her 
ways, and whose praises Doctor Tusher, the Vicar, sounded loudly 
amongst his flock. As for my Lord, he gave no great trouble, being 
considered scarce more than an appendage to my Lady, who, as 
daughter of the old lords of Castlewood, and possessor of vast 
wealth, as the country folk said (though indeed nine-tentlis of it 
existed but in rumour), Avas looked upon as the real queen of the 
castle, and mistress of all it contained. 


CHAPTER III 


IVHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD 
PRECEDED HIM AS PAGE TO ISABELLA 

OMING up to London again some short time after this retreat, 



the Lord Castlewood despatched a retainer of his to a little 


cottage in the village of Ealing, near to London, where for 
some time had dwelt an old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, 
one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots by the French 
king had brought over to this country. With this old man lived 
a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas. He re- 
membered to have lived in another place a short time before, near 
to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a great 
deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of 
Frenchmen. 

There he had a dear, dear friend, w^ho died, and whom he called 
Aunt. She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes ; and her 
face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him 
than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau’s new wife, 
who came to live with him after aunt went away. And there, at 
Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle George, who was 
a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little gentleman, 
and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel. 

When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, 
where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say “ Angel ! 
she belongs to the Babylonish scarlet woman.” Bon Papa was 
always talking of the scarlet woman. He had a little room where 
he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose. 
Little Harry did not like the preaching : he liked better the fine 
stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa’s wife never told 
him pretty stories ; she quarrelled with Uncle George, and he 
went away. 

After this, Harry’s Bon Papa and his wife and two children of 
her own that she brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The 
new wife gave her children the best of everything and Harry many 
a whipping, he knew not why. Besides blows, he got ill names 
from her, which need not be set down here, for the sake of old Mr. 


FATHER HOLT 27 

Pastoiirean, wlio was still kind sometimes. The unhappiness of those 
days is long forgiven, though they cast a shade of melancholy over 
the child’s youth, which will accompany him, no doubt, to the end 
of his days : as those tender twigs are bent the trees grow after- 
ward ; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child, and is not quite 
perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns to be gentle 
and long-suffering with little children. 

Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on 
horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him 
away from Ealing. The noverca, or unjust step-mother, who had 
neglected him for her own two children, gave him supper enough 
the night before he went away, and plenty in the morning. She 
did not beat him once, and told the children to keep their hands off 
him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl ; 
and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he 
always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue 
with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry’s face the day 
he went away ; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She 
whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy ; 
and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave the child his blessing, scowled 
over his shoulder at the strange gentleman, and grumbled out some- 
thing about Babylon and the scarlet lady. He was grown quite 
old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau used to wipe his nose as 
she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young 
woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought ’twas 
only a sham, and sprang quite delighted upon the horse upon which 
the lacquey helped him. 

He was a Frenchman ; his name was Blaise. The child could 
talk to him in his own language perfectly well : he knew it better 
than English indeed, having lived hitherto chiefly among French 
people : and being called the Little Frenchman by other boys on 
Ealing Green. He soon learnt to speak English perfectly, and to 
forget some of his French ; children forget easily. Some earlier and 
fainter recollections the cliild had of a different country; and a 
town with tall white houses ; and a ship. But these were quite 
indistinct in the boy’s mind, as indeed the memory of Ealing soon 
became, at least of much that he suffered there. 

The lacquey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, 
and informed the boy that the gentleman riding before him was 
my lord’s chaplain. Father Holt — that he was now to be called 
Master Harry Esmond — that my Lord Viscount Castlewood was 
his parram — that he was to live at the great house of Castlewood, 

in the province of shire, where he would see Madame the 

Viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a cloth 


28 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


before Blaise’s saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and 
to a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron 
lodged. 

Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought 
him to this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap 
and fiowered morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on 
the head and gave him an orange. 

“ C’est bien ^a,” he said to the priest after eyeing the child, 
and the gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Let Blaise take him out for a holiday,” and out for a holiday 
the boy and the valet went. Harry went jumping along ; he was 
glad enough to go. 

He will remember to his life’s end the delights of those days. 
He was taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thou- 
sand times greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair — and 
on the next happy day they took water on the river, and Harry 
saw London Bridge, with the houses and booksellers’ shops thereon, 
looking like a street, and the Tower of London, with the armour, 
and the great lions and bears in the moat — all under company of 
Monsieur Blaise. 

Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the 
country, namely, my Lord Viscount and the other gentleman ; 
Monsieur Blaise and Harry on a pillion behind them, and two or 
three men with pistols leading the baggage-horses. And all along 
the road the Frenchman told little Harry stories of brigands, which 
made the child’s liair stand on end, and terrified him ; so that at 
the great gloomy inn on the road where they lay, he besought to 
be allowed to sleep in a room with one of the servants, and was 
compassionated by Mr. Holt, the gentleman who travelled with my 
lord, and who gave the child a little bed in his cliamber. 

His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman 
in the boy’s favour, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride 
behind him, and not with the French lacquey ; and all along the 
journey put a thousand questions to the child — as to his foster- 
brother and relations at Ealing; what his old grandfather had 
taught him; what languages he knew; whether he could read 
and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt found that 
Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of 
French and English very well ; and when he asked Harry about 
singing, the lad broke out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin 
Luther, which set Mr. Holt a-laughing ; and even caused his grand 
parrain in the laced hat and periwig to laugh too when Hoit told 
him what the child was singing. For it appeared that Dr. Martin 
Luther’s hymns were not sung in the churches Mr. Holt ])reached at. 


I FIND NEW FRIENDS 29 

“You must never sing that song any more : do you hear, little 
mannikin ? ” says my Lord Viscount, holding up a finger. 

“ But we will try and teach you a better, Harry,” Mr. Holt 
said ; and the child answered, for he was a docile child, and of an 
affectionate nature, “ that he loved pretty songs, and would try and 
learn anything the gentleman would tell him.” That day he so 
pleased the gentlemen by his talk, that they had him to dine with 
them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle ; and Monsieur 
Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon 
him now. 

“ ’Tis well, ’tis well ! ” said Blaise, that night (in his own 
language) when they lay again at an inn. “We are a little lord 
here ; we are a little lord now : we shall see what we are when 
we come to Castle wood, where my Lady is.” 

“ When shall we come to Castlewood, Monsieur Blaise ? ” says 
Harry. 

“ Parbleu ! my Lord does not press himself,” Blaise says, with 
a grin; and, indeed, it seemed as if his Lordship was not in a 
great hurry, for he sj^ent three days on that journey, which Harry 
Esmond hath often since ridden in a dozen hours. For the last 
two of the days Harry rode with the priest, who was so kind to 
him, that the child had grown to be quite fond and familiar with 
him by the joirrney’s end, and had scarce a thought in his little 
heart which by that time he had not confided to his new friend. 

At length, on the third day, at evening, they came to a village 
standing on a green with elms round it, very pretty to look at ; 
and the people there all took off their hats, and made curtseys to 
my Lord Viscount, who bowed to them all languidly ; and there 
was one portly person that wore a cassock and a broad-leafed hat, 
who bowed lower than any one — and with this one both my Lord 
and Mr. Holt had a few words. “ This, Harry, is Castlewood 
church,” says Mr. Holt, “and this is the pillar thereof, learned 
Doctor Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Doctor 
Tusher ! ” 

“ Come up to supper. Doctor,” says my Lord ; at which the 
Doctor made another low bow, and the party moved on towards a 
grand house that was before them, with many grey towers and 
vanes on them, and windows flaming in the sunshine ; and a great 
army of rooks, wheeling over their heads, made for the woods 
behind the house, as Harry saw ; and Mr. Holt told him that they 
lived at Castlewood too. 

They came to the house, and passed under an dtrch into a court- 
yard, with a fountain in the centre, where many men came and 
held my Lord’s stirrup as he descended, and paid great respect to 


30 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Mr. Holt likewise. And the child thought that the servants looked 
at him curiously, and smiled to one another — and he recalled what 
Blaise had said to him when they were in London, and Harry had 
spoken about his godpapa, when the Frenchman said, Parbleu^ 
one sees well that my Lord is your godfather ; ” words whereof the 
poor lad did not know the meaning then, though he apprehended 
the truth in a very short time afterwards, and learned it, and 
thought of it with no small feeling of shame. 

Taking Harry by the hand as soon as they were both descended 
from their horses, Mr. Holt led him across the court, and under a 
low door to rooms on a level with the ground ; one of which Father 
Holt said was to be the boy’s chamber, the other on the other side 
of the passage being the Father’s own ; and as soon as the little 
man’s face was washed, and the Father’s own dress arranged, 
Harry’s guide took him once more to the door by which my Lord 
had entered the hall, and up a stair, and through an ante-room to 
my Lady’s drawing-room — an apartment than wliich Harry thought 
he had never seen anything more grand — no, not in the Tower of 
London which he had just visited. Indeed, tlie chamber was 
richly ornamented in the manner of Queen Elizabeth’s time, with 
great stained windows at either end, and hangings of tapestry, 
which the sun shining through the coloured glass painted of a 
thousand hues ; and here in state, by the fire, sate a lady, to 
whom the priest took up Harry, who was indeed amazed by her 
appearance. 

My Lady Viscountess’s face was daubed with white and red up 
to the eyes, to which the paint gave an unearthly glare : she had a 
tower of lace on her head, under which was a bush of black curls — 
borrowed curls — so that no wonder little Harry Esmond was scared 
when he was first presented to her — the kind priest acting as 
master of the ceremonies at that solemn introduction — and he 
stared at her with eyes almost as great as her own, as he had 
stared at the player-woman who acted the wicked tragedy-queen, 
when the players came down to Ealing Fair. She sate in a great 
chair by the fire-corner ; in her lap was a spaniel dog that barked 
furiously; on a little table by her was her Ladyship’s snuffbox 
and her sugar-plum box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a 
petticoat of flame-coloured brocade. She had as many rings on 
her fingers as the old woman of Banbury Cross ; and pretty small 
feet which she was fond of showing, with great gold clocks to her 
stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and an odour of 
musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved or quitted 
the room, leaning on her tortoiseshell stick, little Fury barking at 
her heels. 


31 


MY LADY VISCOUNTESS 

Mrs. Tuslier, the parson’s wife, was with my Lady. She had 
been waiting-woman to her Ladyship in the late Lord’s time, and, 
having her soul in that business, took naturally to it when the 
Viscountess of Castlewood returned to inhabit her father’s house. 

“ I present to your Ladyship your kinsman and little page of 
honour. Master Henry Esmond,” Mr. Holt said, bowing lowly, 
with a sort of comical humility. “ Make a pretty bow to my 
Lady, Monsieur; and tlien another little bow, not so low, to 
Madame Tusher — the fair priestess of Castlewood.” 

“ Where I have lived and hope to die, sir,” says Madame Tusher, 
giving a hard glance at the brat, and then at my Lady. 

Upon her the boy’s whole attention was for a time directed. 
He could not keep his great eyes off from her. Since the Empress 
of Ealing, he had seen nothing so awful. 

“ Does my appearance please you, little page 1 ” asked the lady. 

“ He would be very hard to please if it didn’t,” cried Madame 
Tusher. 

“ Have done, you silly Maria,” said Lady Castlewood. 

“ Where I’m attached, I’m attached, Madame — and I’d die 
rather than not say so.” 

“ Je meurs ou je m’attache,” Mr. Holt said with a polite grin. 
“ The ivy says so in the picture, and clings to the oak like a fond 
parasite as it is.” 

“ Parricide, sir ! ” cries Mrs. Tusher. 

“ Hush, Tusher — you are always bickering with Father Holt,” 
cried my Lady. “ Come and kiss my hand, child ; ” and the oak 
held out a branch to little Harry Esmond, who took and dutifully 
kissed the lean old hand, upon the gnarled knuckles of which there 
glittered a hundred rings. 

“ To kiss that hand would make many a pretty fellow happy ! ” 
cried Mrs. Tusher ; on which my Lady crying out “ Go, you 
foolish Tusher ! ” and tapping her with her great fan, Tusher ran 
forward to seize her hand and kiss it. Fury arose and barked 
furiously at Tusher ; and Father Holt looked on at this queer scene, 
with arch, grave glances. 

The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady 
on whom this artless flattery was bestowed ; for having gone down 
on his knee (as Father Holt had directed him, and the mode then 
was) and performed his obeisance, she said, “ Page Esmond, my 
groom of the chamber will inform you what your duties are, when 
you wait upon my Lord and me; and good Father Holt will 
instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name. You will pay 
him obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as 
learned and as good as your tutor.” 


32 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, 
and to be more afraid of him than of any tiling else in the world. 
If she was ever so angry, a word or look from Fatlier Holt made 
her calm : indeed lie had a vast power of subjecting those who 
came near him ; and, among the rest, his new pupil gave himself 
up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good Father, 
and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw 
him. 

He put his small hand into the Father’s as he walked away 
from his first presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions 
in his artless childless way. “Who is that other woman'?” he 
asked. “ She is fat and round ; she is more pretty than my Lady 
Castlewood.” 

“ She is Madame Tusher, the parson’s wife of Castlewood. She 
has a son of your age, but bigger than you.” 

“ Why does she like so to kiss my Lady’s hand 1 It is not 
good to kiss.” 

“ Tastes are different, little man. Madame Tusher is attached 
to my Lady, having been her waiting-woman before she was married, 
in the old lord’s time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. 
The English household divines often marry the waiting- women.” 

“You will not marry the Frenchwoman, will you ? I saw her 
laughing with Blaise in the buttery.” 

“ I belong to a Church that is older and better than the English 
Church,” Mr. Holt said (making a sigh whereof Esmond did not 
then understand the meaning, across his breast and forehead) ; “in 
our Church the clergy do not marry. You will understand these 
things better soon.” 

“Was not Saint Peter the head of your Church'? — Dr. Rabbits 
of Ealing told us so.” 

The Fatlier said, “ Yes, he was.” 

“ But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday 
that his wife’s mother lay sick of the fever.” On which the Father 
again laughed, and said he would understand this too better soon, 
and talked of other things, and took away Harry Esmond, and 
showed him the great old house which he had come to inhabit. 

It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which 
were rooks’ nests, where the birds at morning and returning home 
at evening made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a 
river, with a steep ancient bridge crossing it ; and beyond that a 
large pleasant green flat, where the village of Castlewood stood, and 
stands, with the church in the midst, the parsonage hard by it, the 
inn with the blacksmith’s forge beside it, and the sign of the “ Three 
Castles ” on the elm. The London road stretched away towards 


I BEGIN TO HAVE A VOCATION 33 

the rising- snii, and to the west were swelling hills and peaks, behind 
which many a time Harry Esmond saw the same sun setting, that 
he now looks on thousands of miles away across the great ocean — 
in a new Castlewood, by another stream, that bears, like the new 
country of wandering ^neas, the fond names of the land of his 
youth. 

The Hall of Castlewood was built witli two courts, whereof one 
only, the fountain-court, was now inhabited, the other having been 
battered down in the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain-court, 
still in good repair, was the great hall, near to the kitchen and 
butteries ; a dozen of living-rooms looking to the north, and com- 
municating with the little chapel that faced eastwards and the 
buildings stretching from that to the main gate, and with the hall 
(which looked to the west) into the court now dismantled. This 
court had been the most magnificent of the two, until the Protector’s 
cannon tore down one side of it before the place was taken and 
stormed. The besiegers entered at the terrace under the clock- 
tower, slaying every man of the garrison, and at their head my 
Lord’s brother, Francis Esmond. 

The Restoration did not bring enough money to the Lord 
Castlewood to restore this ruined part of his house ; where were 
the morning parlours, above them the long music-gallery, and before 
which stretched the garden-terrace, where, however, the flowers grew 
again which the boots of the Roundheads had trodden in their 
assault, and which was restored without much cost, and only a little 
care, by both ladies who succeeded the second viscount in the 
government of this mansion. Round the terrace garden was a low 
wall with a wicket leading to the wooded height beyond, that is 
called Cromwell’s Battery to this day. 

Young Harry Esmond learned the domestic part of his duty, 
which was easy enougli, from the groom of her Ladyship’s chamber : 
serving the Countess, as the custom commonly was in his boyhood, 
as page, waiting at her chair, bringing her scented water and the 
silver basin after dinner — sitting on her carriage-step on state 
occasions, or on public days introducing her company to her. This 
was chiefly of the Catholic gentry, of whom there were a pretty 
many in the country and neighbouring city; and who rode not 
seldom to Castlewood to partake of the hospitalities there. In the 
second year of their residence, the company seemed especially to 
increase. My Lord and my Lady were seldom without visitors, in 
whose society it was curious to contrast the difference of behaviour 
between Father Holt, the director of the family, and Doctor Tusher, 
the rector of the parish — Mr. Holt moving amongst the very highest 
as quite their equal, and as commanding them all ; while poor 
7 c 


34 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Doctor Tusher, whose position was indeed a difficult one, having 
been chaplain once to the Hall, and still to the Protestant servants 
there, seemed more like an usher than an equal, and always rose to 
go away after the first course. 

Also there came in these times to Father Holt many private 
visitors, whom, after a little, Henry Esmond had little difficulty in 
recognising as ecclesiastics of the Father’s persuasion, whatever their 
dresses (and they adopted all) might be. These were closeted with 
the Father constantly, and often came and rode away witliout 
paying their devoirs to my Lord and Lady — to the Lady and Lord 
rather — his Lordship being little more than a cipher in the house, 
and entirely under his domineering partner. A little fowling, a 
little hunting, a great deal of sleep, and a long time at cards and 
table, carried through one day after another with his Lordship. 
When meetings took place in this second year, which often would 
happen with closed doors, the page found my Lord’s sheet of paper 
scribbled over with dogs and horses, and ’twas said he had much 
ado to keep himself awake at these councils : the Countess ruling 
over them, and he acting as little more than her secretary. 

Father Holt began speedily to be so much occupied with these 
meetings as rather to neglect the education of the little lad who so 
gladly put himself under the kind priest’s orders. At first they 
read much and regularly, both in Latin and French ; the Father 
not neglecting in anything to impress his faith upon his pupil, but 
not forcing him violently, and treating him with a delicacy and 
kindness which surprised and attached the child, always more easily 
won by these methods than by any severe exercise of authority. j 
And his delight in their walks was to tell Harry of the glories of | 

his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of its Brethren converting the ] 

heathen by myriads, traversing the desert, facing the stake, ruling 
the courts and councils, or braving the tortures of kings ; so that 
Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the Jesuits was the greatest 
})rize of life and bravest end of ambition ; the greatest career here 
and in heaven the surest reward ; and began to long for the day, 
not only when he should enter into the one church and receive his 
first communion, but when he might join that wonderful brother- 
hood, which was present throughout all the world, and which num- 
bered the wisest, the bravest, the highest born, the most eloquent 
of men among its members. Father Holt bade him keep his views j 

secret, and to hide them as a great treasure which would escape j 

liim if it was revealed ; and, proud of this confidence and secret ' 

vested in him, the lad became fondly attached to the master who | 

initiated him into a mystery so wonderful and awful. And when 
little Tom Tusher, his neighbour, came from scliool for his holiday, i 


I KEEP THE SECRET 


35 


and said how he, too, was to be bred up for an English priest, and 
would get what he called an exhibition from liis school, and then a 
college scholarship and fellowship, and then a good living — it tasked 
young Harry Esmond’s powers of reticence not to say to his young 
companion, “ Church ! priesthood ! fat living ! My dear Tommy, 
do you call yours a church and a priesthood 1 What is a fat living 
compared to converting a hundred thousand heathens by a single 
sermon 1 What is a scholarship at Trinity by the side of a crown 
of martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your head is taken oft‘1 
Could your master at school sail over the Thames on his gown ? 
Have you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk, and 
cry ? My good Tommy, in dear Father Holt’s church these things 
take place every day. You know Saint Philip of the Willows 
appeared to Lord Castlewood, and caused him to turn to the one 
true church. No saints ever come to you.” And Harry Esmond, 
because of his promise to Father Holt, hiding away these treasures 
of faith from T. Tusher, delivered himself of them nevertheless 
simply to Father Holt ; who stroked his head, smiled at him with 
his inscrutable look, and told him that he did well to meditate on 
these great things, and not to talk of them except under direction. 


CHAPTER IV 


I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO 
THAT RELIGION— VISCOUNTESS CASTLEIVOOD 

H ad time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been 
properly nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest 
ere he was a dozen years older, and might have finished his 
days a martyr in China or a victim on Tower Hill : for, in the few 
months they spent together at Castlewood, Mr. Holt obtained an 
entire mastery over the boy’s intellect and affections ; and had 
brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought with all his 
heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that 
which many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. 
By love, by a brightness of wit and good-humour that charmed all, 
by an authority which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and 
silence about him which increased the child’s reverence for him, he 
won Harry’s absolute fealty, and would have kept it, doubtless, if 
schemes greater and more important than a poor little boy’s admission 
into orders had not called him away. 

After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs 
might be called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bicker- 
ing), my Lord and Lady left the country for London, taking their 
director with them : and his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter 
tears in his life than he did for nights after the first parting with 
his dear friend, as he lay in the lonely chamber next to that which 
the Father used to occupy. He and a few domestics were left as 
the only tenants of the great house : and, though Harry sedulously 
did all the tasks which the Father set him, he had many hours 
unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered his little brains 
with the great books he found there. 

After a while, the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness 
of the place ; and in after days remembered this part of his life as 
a period not unhappy. When the family was at London the whole 
of the establishment travelled thither with the exception of the 
porter — who was, moreover, brewer, gardener, and woodman — and 
his wife and children. These had their lodging in the gate-house 
hard by, with a door into the court ; and a window looking out on 


37 


I BEGIN TO OBSERVE 

the green was the Chaplain’s room ; and next to this a small chamber 
where Father Holt had his books, and Harry Esmond his sleeping 
closet. The side of the house facing the east had escaped the guns 
of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the height facing the 
western court ; so that this eastern end bore few marks of demoli- 
tion, save in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving 
Edward the Sixth had been broke by the Commonwealth-men. In 
Father Holt’s time little Harry Esmond acted as his familiar, and 
faithful little servitor ; beating his clothes, folding his vestments, 
fetching his water from the well long before daylight, ready to run 
anywhere for the service of his beloved priest. When the Father 
was away, he locked his private chamber ; but the room where the 
books were was left to little Harry, who, but for the society of this 
gentleman, was little less solitary when Lord Castlewood was at 
home 

The French wit saith that a hero is none to his valet-de-chamhre^ 
and it required less quick eyes than my Lady’s little page was 
naturally endowed with, to see that she had many qualities by no 
means heroic, however much Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax 
her. When Father Holt was not by, who exercised an entire 
authority over the pair, my Lord and my Lady quarrelled and 
abused each other so as to make the servants laugh, and to frighten 
the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled before his mistress, 
who called him by a hundred ugly names, who made nothing of 
boxing his ears, and tilting the silver basin in his face which it was 
his business to present to her after dinner. She hath repaired, by 
subsequent kindness to him, these severities, which it must be 
owned made his childhood very unhappy. She was but unhappy 
herself at this time, poor soul ! and I suppose made her dependants 
lead her own sad life. I think my Lord was as much afraid of her 
as her page was, and the only person of the household who mastered 
her was Mr. Holt. Harry was only too glad when the Father 
dined at table, and to slink away and prattle with him afterwards, 
or read with him, or walk with him. Luckily my Lady Viscountess 
did not rise till noon. Heaven help the poor waiting-woman who 
liad charge of her toilette ! I have often seen the poor wretch come 
out with red eyes from the closet where those long and mysterious 
rites of her Ladyship’s dress were performed, and the backgammon- 
box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher’s fingers when she played 
ill, or the game was going the wrong way. 

Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind 
inventors of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at 
least of her Ladyship’s day, during which her family was pretty 
easy. Without this occupation my Lady frequently declared che 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


.S8 


should die. Her dependants one after another relieved guard — 
’twas rather a dangerous post to play with her Ladyship — and 
took the cards turn about. Mr. Holt would sit with her at piquet 
during hours together, at which time she behaved herself properly ; 
and as for Doctor Tusher, I believe he would have left a parishioner’s 
dying bed, if summoned to play a rubber with his patroness at 
Castlewood. Sometimes, when they were pretty comfortable to- 
gether, my Lord took a hand. Besides these my Lady had her 
faithful poor Tusher, and one, two, three gentlemen whom Harry 
Esmond could recollect in his time. They could not bear that 
genteel service very long ; one after another tried and failed at it. 
These and the housekeeper, and little HaiTy Esmond, had a table 
of their own. Poor ladies ! their life was far harder than the 
page’s. He was sound asleep, tucked up in his little bed, whilst 
they were sitting by her Ladyship reading her to sleep, with the 
“News Letter,” or the “Grand Cyrus.” My Lady used to have 
boxes of new plays from London, and Hany was forbidden, under 
the pain of a whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he de- 
served the penalty pretty often, and got it sometimes. Father 
Holt applied it twice or thrice, when he caught the young scape- 
grace with a delightful wicked comedy of Mr. Shadwell’s or Mr. 
Wycherley’s under his pillow. 

These, when he took any, were my Lord’s favourite reading. 
But he was averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, 
to much occupation of any sort. 

It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my Lord 
treated him with more kindness when his lady was not present, 
and Lord Castlewood would take the lad sometimes on his little 
journeys a-hunting or a-birding; he loved to play at cards and 
tric-trac with him, which games the boy learned to pleasure his 
lord : and was growing to like him better daily, showing a special 
I)leasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him, patting him on 
the head, and promising that he would provide for the boy. How- 
ever, in my Lady’s presence, my Lord showed no such marks of 
kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him 
sharply for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon 
of young Esmond when they were private, saying if he did not 
speak roughlj", she would, and his tongue was not such a bad one 
as his lady’s — a point whereof the boy, young as he was, was very 
well assured. 

Great public events were happening all this while, of which 
the simple young page took little count. But one day, riding into 
tlie neighbouring town on the step of my Lady’s coach, his Lordship 
and she and Father Holt being inside, a great mob of people came 


I AM ASSAILED BY THE MOB 39 

hooting and jeering round the coach, bawling out “ The Bishops for 
ever ! ” “ Down with the Pope ! ” “No Popery ! no Popery ! Jezebel, 
Jezebel ! ” so that my Lord began to laugh, my Lady’s eyes to roll 
with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness, and feared nobody ; 
whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the step, sank 
back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her Ladyship, “ For 
God’s sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window ; sit still.” 
But she did not obey this prudent injunction of the Father; she 
thrust her head out of the coach window, and screamed out to the 
coachman, “ Flog your way through them, the brutes, James, and 
use your whip ! ” 

The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh 
cries of “Jezebel ! Jezebel ! ” My Lord only laughed the more ; he 
was a languid gentleman : nothing seemed to excite him commonly, 
though I have seen him cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, 
and his face (which was generally very yellow and calm) grow quite 
red and cheerful during a burst over the Downs after a hare, and 
laugh, and swear, and huzzah at a cock-fight, of which sport he was 
very fond. And now, when the mob began to hoot his lady, he 
laughed with something of a mischievous look, as though he expected 
sport, and thought that she and they were a match. 

James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the 
mob, probably, for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and 
the postboy that rode with the first pair (my Lady always rode 
with her coach-and-six) gave a cut of his thong over the shoulders 
of one fellow who put his hand out towards the leading horse’s rein. 

It was a market-day, and the country people were all assembled 
with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things ; the postillion 
had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, 
but a great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, 
at which my Lord laughed more, for it knocked my Lady’s fan out 
of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt’s stomach. Then came 
a shower of carrots and potatoes. 

“ For Heaven’s sake be still ! ” says Mr. Holt ; “ we are not ten 
paces from the ‘ Bell ’ archway, where they can shut the gates on us, 
and keep out this canaille.’’ 

The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow 
in the crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which 
the poor little wretch set up a shout ; the man laughed, a great big 

saddler’s apprentice of the town. “ Ah ! you d little yelling 

Popish bastard,” he said, and stooped to pick up another; the 
crowd had gathered quite between the horses and the inn door by 
this time, and the coach was brought to a dead stand-still. My 
Lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the door on his side of the 


40 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

coach, squeezing little Harry behind it ; had hold of the potato- 
thrower’s collar in an instant, and the next moment the brute’s heels 
were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a thump. 

“You hulking coward!” says he; “you pack of screaming 
blackguards ! how dare you attack children, and insult women 1 
Fling another shot at that carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, 
and by the Lord I’ll send my rapier through you ! ” 

Some of the mob cried, “ Huzzah, my Lord ! ” for they knew 
him, and the saddler’s man was a known bruiser, near twice as big 
as my Lord Viscount. 

“ Make way there,” says he (he spoke in a high shrill voice, but 
with a great air of authority). “ Make way, and let her Ladyship’s 
carriage pass.” The men that were between the coach and the gate 
of the “ Bell ” actually did make way, and the horses w^ent in, my 
Lord walking after them with his hat on his head. 

As he was going in at the gate, through which the coach had 
just rolled, another cry begins, of “ No Popery — no Papists ! ” My 
Lord turns round and faces them once more. 

“ God save the King ! ” says he at the highest pitch of his voice. 

“ Who dares abuse the King’s religion ? You, you d d psalm- 

singing cobbler, as sure as I’m a magistrate of this county I’ll commit 
you 1 ” The fellow shrank back, and my Lord retreated with all 
the honours of the day. But when the little flurry caused by the 
scene was over, and the flush passed off his face, he relapsed into his 
usual languor, trifled with his little dog, and yawned when my Lady 
spoke to him. 

This mob was one of many thousands that were going about the . 
country at that time, huzzahing for the acquittal of the seven bishops 
who had been tried just then, and about whom little Harry Esmond 
at that time knew scarce anything. It was Assizes at Hexton, and 
there was a great meeting of the gentry at the “ Bell ” ; and my 
Lord’s people had their new liveries on, and Harry a little suit of 
blue-and-silver, which he wore upon occasions of state ; and the 
gentlefolks came round and talked to my Lord ; and a judge in a red 
gown, who seemed a very great personage, especially complimented 
him and my Lady, who was mighty grand. Harry remembers her 
train borne up by her gentlewoman. There was an assembly and 
ball at the great room at the “ Bell,” and other young gentlemen of 
the county families looked on as he did. ■ One of them jeered him 
for his black eye, which was swelled by the potato, and another 
called him a bastard, on which lie and Harry fell to fisticuffs. My 
Lord’s cousin. Colonel Esmond of Walcote, was there, and separated 
the two lads — a great tall gentleman, with a handsome good-natured 
face. The boy did not know how nearly in after-life he should be 


PLEASANT TIMES 41 

allied to Colonel Esmond, and how mneh kindness he should have 
to owe him. 

There was little love between the two families. My Lady used 
not to spare Colonel Esmond in talking of him, for reasons which 
have been hinted already; but about which, at his tender age, 
Henry Esmond could be expected to know nothing. 

Very soon afterwards, my Lord and Lady went to London with 
Mr. Holt, leaving, however, the page behind them. The little man 
had the great house of Castlewood to himself ; or between him and 
the housekeeper, Mrs. Worksop, an old lady who was a kinswoman 
of the family in some distant way, and a Protestant, but a staunch 
Tory and king’s-man, as all the Esmonds were. He used to go to 
school to Dr. Tusher when he was at home, though the Doctor was 
much occupied too. There was a great stir and commotion every- 
where, even in the little quiet village of Castlewood, whither a 
party of people came from the town, who would have broken 
Castlewood Chapel windows, but the village people turned out, 
and even old Sieveright, the republican blacksmith, along with 
them : for my Lady, though she was a Papist, and had many odd 
ways, was kind to the tenantry, and there was always a plenty of 
beef, and blankets, and medicine for the poor at Castlewood Hall. 

A kingdom was changing hands whilst my Lord and Lady were 
away. King James was flying, the Dutchmen were coming ; awful 
stories about them and the Prince of Orange used old Mrs. Worksop 
to tell to the idle little page. 

He liked the solitude of the great house very well ; he had all 
the play-books to read, and no Father Holt to whip him, and a 
hundred childish pursuits and pastimes, without doors and within, 
which made this time very pleasant. 


CHAPTER V 


MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS EOR THE RESTORATION 
OF KING JAMES THE SECOND 


N ot having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for 
eels which he had placed the night before, the lad was lying 
in his little bed, waiting for the hour when the gate would 
be open, and he and his comrade, John Lockwood, the porter’s son, 
might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At 
daybreak, John was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the 
sport had served as a reveillez long since — so long, that it seemed 
to him as if the day never would come. 

It might have been four o’clock when he heard the door of 
the opposite chamber, the Chaplain’s room, open, and the voice of 
a man coughing in the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for 
certain it was a robber, or hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging 
open his own door, saw before him the Chaplain’s door open, and a 
light inside, and a figure standing in the doorway, in the midst of 
a great smoke which issued from the room. 

“ Who’s there 1 ” cried out the boy, wdio was of a good spirit. 

“ Silentium / ” whispered the other ; “ ’tis I, my boy ! ” and, 
holding his hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognising his 
master and friend. Father Holt. A curtain was over the window 
of the Chaplain’s room that looked to the court, and Harry saw 
that the smoke came from a great flame of papers which were 
burning in a brazier when he entered the Chaplain’s room. After 
giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed 
to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of his papers, 
drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which 
Harry had never seen before. 

Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad’s attention fixed at once 
on this hole. “That is right, Harry,” he said; “faithful little 
famuli see all and say nothing. You are' faithful, I know.” 

“ I know I would go to the stake for you,” said Harry. 

“I don’t want your head,” said the Father, patting it kindly; “all 
you have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn tliese papers, 
and say nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them ? ” 


THE SECIiET OF THE WARDROBE 


43 


Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head ; he had looked 
as the fact was, and without thinking, at the paper befoi-e him ; 
and though he had seen it, could not understand a word of it, the 
letters being quite clear enough, but quite without meaning. They 
burned the papers, beating down the ashes in a brazier, so that 
scarce any traces of them remained. 

Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses 
than one ; it not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish eccle- 
siastics to wear their proper dress ; and he was, in consequence, in 
no wise astonished that the priest should now appear before him in 
a riding-dress, with large buff leather boots, and a feather to his 
hat, plain, but such as gentlemen wore. 

“You know the secret of the cupboard,” said he, laughing, 
“ and must be prepared for other mysteries ; ” and he opened — but 
not a secret cupboard this time — only a wardrobe, which he usually 
kept locked, and from which he now took out two or three dresses 
and perruques of different colours, and a couple of swords of a pretty 
make (Father Holt was an expert practitioner with the small-sw^ord, 
and every day, whilst he was at home, he and his pupil practised 
this exercise, in which the lad became a very great proficient), a 
military coat and cloak, and a farmer’s smock, and placed them in 
the large hole over the mantelpiece from which the papers had 
been taken. 

“ If they miss the cupboard,” he said, “ they will not find these ; 
if they find them, they’ll tell no tales, except that Father Holt 
wore more suits of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know 
what deceivers we are, Harry.” 

Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to 
leave him ; but “No,” the priest said, “ I may very likely come 
back with my Lord in a few days. We are to be tolerated ; we 
are not to be persecuted. But they may take a fancy to pay a 
visit at Castlewood ere our return ; and, as gentlemen of my cloth 
are suspected, they might choose to examine my papers, wliicli con- 
cern nobody — at least not them.” And to this day, whether the 
papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of that 
mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, 
Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance. 

The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, &c.. Holt left un- 
touched on his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down — with a 
laugh, however — and flinging into the brazier, where he only half 
burned them, some theological treatises which he had been writing 
against the English divines. “And now,” said he, “Henry, my 
son, you may testify, with a safe conscience, that yon saw^ me 
burning Latin sermons the last time I was here before I went 


44* THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

away to London ; and it will be daybreak directly, and I must l)e 
away before Lockwood is stirring.” 

“Will not Lockwood let yon out, sir I” Esmond asked. Holt 
laughed ; he was never more gay or good-humoured than Avhen in 
the midst of action or danger. 

“ Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind you,” he 
said ; “ nor would you, you little wretch ! had you slept better. 
You must forget that I have been here ; and now farewell. Close 
the door, and go to your own room, and don’t come out till — stay, 
why should you not know one secret more 1 I know you will never 
betray me.” 

In the Chaplain’s room were two windows : the one looking into 
the court facing westwards to tlie fountain ; the other, a small case- 
ment strongly barred, and looking on to the green in front of the 
Hall. This window was too high to reach from the ground : but, 
mounting on a buffet which stood beneath it. Father Holt showed 
me how, by pressing on the base of the window, the whole frame- 
work of lead, glass, and iron stanchions descended into a cavity 
worked below, from which it could be drawn and restored to its 
usual place from without ; a broken pane being purposely open to 
admit the hand which was to work upon the spring of the machine. 

“When I am gone,” Father Holt said, “you may push away 
the buffet, so that no one may fancy that an exit has been made 
that way ; lock the door ; place the key — where shall we put the 
keyl — under ‘Chrysostom’ on the bookshelf; and if any ask for 
it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had 
need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into 
the ditch ; and so once more farewell, until I see thee again, my 
dear son.” And with this the intrepid Father mounted the buffet 
with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting 
up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only 
leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his 
hand before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firm as ever, 
seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father Holt next 
arrived at Castlewood, it was by the public gate on horseback ; and 
he never so much as alluded to the existence of the private issue 
to Harry, except when he had need of a private messenger from 
within, for which end, no doubt, he had instructed his young pupil 
in the means of quitting the Hall. 

Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner than betray 
Ids friend and master, as Mr. Holt well knew; for he had tried 
the boy more than once, putting temptations in his way, to see 
whether he would yield to them and confess afterwards, or whether 
he would resist them, as he did sometimes, or whether he would 


DOCTOR TUSHER 


45 


lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on this point, 
however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it certainly is not, 
yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation — and therefore a 
downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply 
to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, 
on the contrary, praiseworthy ; and as lawful a way as the other 
of eluding a 'wrongful demand. For instance (says he), suppose a 
good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge there, had been 
asked, “Is King Charles up that oak tree?” his duty would have 
been not to say. Yes — so that the Cromwellians should seize the 
king and murder him like his father — but No ; his Majesty being 
private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal eyes : 
all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the 
rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and 
with gratitude from his tutor. When, then. Holt was gone, and 
told Harry not to see him, it was as if he had never been. And 
he had this answer pat when he came to be questioned a few days 
after. 

The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond 
learned from seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the 
roads were muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only 
his stuft‘ one, a-horseback), with a great orange cockade in his 
broad-leafed hat, and Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like 
decoration. The Doctor was walking up and down in front of his 
parsonage, when little Esmond saw him, and heard him say he was 
going to pay his duty to his Highness the Prince, as he mounted 
his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The village people 
had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith’s laughing 
daughter pinned one into Harry’s old hat, which he tore out in- 
dignantly when they bade him to cry “ God save the Prince of 
Orange and the Protestant religion ! ” but the people only laughed, 
for they liked the boy in the village, where his solitary condition 
moved the general pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and 
faces in many houses. Father Holt had many friends there too, 
for he not only would fight the blacksmith at theology, never losing 
his temper, but laughing the whole time in his pleasant way ; but 
he cured him of an ague with quinquina, and was always ready 
with a kind word for any man that asked it, so that they said in 
the village ’twas a pity the two were Papists. 

The Director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well ; 
indeed, the former was a perfectly-bred gentleman, and it was the 
latter’s business to agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the 
lady’s maid, his spouse, had a boy who was about the age of little 
Esmond • and there was such a friendship between the lads, as 


46 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


propinquity and tolerable kindness and good-humour on either side 
would be pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher was sent off early, 
however, to a school in London, whither his father took him and 
a volume of sermons, in the first year of the reign of King J ames ; 
and Tom returned but once a year afterwards to Castlewood for 
many years of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was 
less danger to Tom of a perversion of his faith by the Director, 
who scarce ever saw him, tlian there was to Harry, who constantly 
was in the Vicar’s company ; but as long as Harry’s religion was 
his Majesty’s, and my Lord’s, and my Lady’s, the Doctor said 
gravely, it should not be for him to disturb or disquiet him : it 
was far from him to say that his Majesty’s Church was not a 
branch of the Catholic Church ; upon which Father Holt used, 
according to his custom, to laugh, and say that the Holy Church 
throughout all the world, and the noble Army of Martyrs, were 
very much obliged to the Doctor. 

It was while Doctor Tusher was away at Salisbury that there 
came a troop of dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in 
Castlewood, and some of them came up to the Hall, where they 
took possession, robbing nothing however beyond the hen-house 
and the beer-cellar ; and only insisting upon going through the 
house and looking for papers. The first room they asked to look 
at was Father Holt’s room, of which Harry Esmond brought the 
key, and they opened the drawers and the cupboards, and tossed 
over the papers and clothes — but found nothing except his books 
and clothes, and the vestments in a box by themselves, with which 
the dragoons made merry, to Harry Esmond’s horror. And to 
the questions which the gentleman put to Harry, he replied that 
Father Holt was a very kind man to him, and a very learned man, 
and Harry supposed would tell him none of his secrets, if he had 
any. He was about eleven years old at this time, and looked as 
innocent as boys of his age. 

The family were away more than six months, and when tliey 
returned they were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James 
had been banished, the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and 
the direst persecutions of those of the Catholic faith were appre- 
hended by my Lady, who said she did not believe that there was a 
word of truth in the promises of toleration that Dutch monster 
made, or in a single word the perjured wretch said. My Lord and 
Lady were in a manner prisoners in their own house ; so her Lady- 
ship gave the little page to know, who was by this time growing 
of an age to understand what was passing about him, and something 
of the characters of the people he lived with. 

“We are prisoners,” says she; “in everything but chains we 


DOCTOR TUSHER 


47 


are prisoners. Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, 
or strike off my head from this poor little throat ” (and she clasped 
it in her long fingers). “ The blood of the Esmonds will always 
flow freely for their kings. We are not like the Churchills — the 
Judases, who kiss their master and betray him. We know how to 
suffer, how even to forgive in the royal cause ” (no doubt it was 
that ftital business of losing the place of Groom of the Posset to 
which her Ladyship alluded, as she did half-a-dozen times in the 
day). “Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and his odious 
Dutch tortures — the beast ! the wretch ! I spit upon him and 
defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block ; 
cheerfully will I accompany my Lord to the scaffold : we will cry 
‘ God save King James ! ’ with our dying breath, and smile in the 
face of the executioner.” And she told her page, a hundred times 
at least, of the particulars of the last interview which she had 
with his Majesty. 

“ I flung myself before my liege’s feet,” she said, “at Salisbury. 
I devoted myself — my husband — my house, to his cause. Perhaps 
he remembered old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and 
fair ; perhaps he recalled the day when ’twas not / that knelt — at 
least he spoke to me with a voice that reminded me of days gone 
by. ‘ Egad ! ’ said his Majesty, ‘ you should go to the Prince of 
Orange, if you want anything.’ ‘ No, sire,’ I replied, ‘ I would not 
kneel to a Usurper; the Esmond that would have served your 
Majesty will never be groom to a traitor’s posset.’ The royal 
exile smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune; he deigned to 
raise me with words of consolation. The Viscount, my husband, 
himself, could not be angry at the august salute with which he 
honoured me ! ” 

The public misfortune had the effect of making my Lord and 
his Lady better friends than they ever had been since their courtship. 
My Lord Viscount had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these 
were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the King ; and the 
praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife’s good opinion, 
and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and 
supine life which he had been leading ; was always riding to and 
fro in consultation with this friend or that of the King’s ; the page 
of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his 
greater cheerfulness and altered demeanour. 

Father Holt came to the Hall constantly, but officiated no 
longer openly as chaplain ; he was always fetching and carrying : 
strangers, military and ecclesiastic (Harry knew the latter, though 
they came in all sorts of disguises), were continually arriving and 
departing. My Lord made long absences and sudden reappearances, 


48 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

using sometimes the means of exit which Father Holt had employed, 
though how often the little window in the Chaplain’s room let in 
or let out my Lord and his friends, Harry could not tell. He 
stoutly kept his promise to the Father of not prying, and if at | 
midnight from his little room he heard noises of persons stirring I 
in the next chamber, he turned round to the wall, and hid his 
curiosity under liis pillow until it fell asleep. Of course he could 
not help remarking that the priest’s journeys were constant, and 
understanding by a hundred signs that some active though secret 
business employed him : what this was may pretty well be guessed 
by what soon happened to my Lord. 

No garrison or watch was put into Castlewood when my Lord 
came back, but a guard was in the village ; and one or other of 
them was always on the Green keeping a look-out on our great gate, 
and those who went out and in, Lockwood said that at night 
especially every person who came in or went out was watched 
by the outlying sentries. ’Twas lucky that we had a gate which 
their Worships knew nothing about. My Lord and Father Holt 
must have made constant journeys at night : once or twice little 
Harry acted as their messenger and discreet aide-de-camp. He re- 
members he was bidden to go into the village with his fishing- 
rod, enter certain houses, ask for a drink of water, and tell the 
good man, “There would be a horse-market at Newbury next 
Thursday,” and so carry the same message on to the next house 
on his list. 

He did not know what the message meant at the time, nor 
what Avas happening : which may as well, however, for clearness’ 
sake, be explained here. The Prince of Orange being gone to 
Ireland, where the King was ready to meet him with a great army, 
it was determined that a great rising of his Majesty’s party should 
take place in this country ; and my Lord was to head the force 
in our county. Of late he had taken a greater lead in affairs than 
before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his elbow, and my 
Lady Viscountess strongly urging him on ; and my Lord Sark 
being in the Tower a prisoner, and Sir Wilmot Crawley, of Queen’s 
Crawley, having gone over to the Prince of Orange’s side — my Lord 
became the most considerable person in our part of the county for 
the affairs of the King. 

It was arranged that the regiment of Scots Greys and Dragoons, 
then quartered at Newbury, should declare for the King on a certain 
day, when likeAvise the gentry affected to his Majesty’s cause were 
to come in with their tenants and adlierents to Newbury, march 
upon the Dutch troops at Reading under Ginckel ; and, these over- 
thrown, and their indomitable little master away in Ireland, ’twas 


JUNE 1690 49 

thought that our side miglit move on London itself, and a confident 
victory was predicted for the King. 

As these great matters were in agitation, my Lord lost his 
'listless manner and seemed to gain health ; my Lady did not scold 
him, Mr Holt came to and fro, busy always; and little Harry 
longed to have been a few inches taller, that he might draw a sword 
in this good cause. 

One day, it must have been about the month of June 1690 , 
my Lord, in a great horseman’s coat, under which Harry could see 
the shining of a steel breastplate he had on, called little Harry 
to him, put the hair off the child’s forehead, and kissed him, and 
bade God bless him in such an affectionate way as he never had 
used before. Father Holt blessed him too, and then they took 
leave of my Lady Viscountess, who came from her apartment witli 
a pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, and her gentlewoman and Mrs. 
Tusher supporting her. “ You are going to — to ride,” says she. 
“ Oh, that I might come too ! — but in my situation I am forbidden 
horse exercise.” 

“ We kiss my Lady Marchioness’s hand,” says Mr. Holt. 

“ My Lord, God speed you ! ” she said, stepping up and em- 
bracing my Lord in a grand manner. “Mr. Holt, I ask your 
blessing : ” and she knelt down for that, whilst Mrs. Tusher tossed 
her head up. 

Mr. Holt gave the same benediction to the little page, who 
went down and held my Lord’s stirrups for him to mount ; there 
were two servants waiting there too — and they rode out of Castle- 
wood gate. 

As they crossed the bridge, Harry could see an officer in scarlet 
ride up touching his hat, and address my Lord. 

The party stopped, and came to some parley or discussion, 
which presently ended, my Lord putting his horse into a canter 
after taking off his hat and making a bow to the officer, who rode 
alongside him step for step : the trooper accompanying him falling 
back, and riding with my Lord’s two men. They cantered over 
the green, and behind the elms (my Lord waving his hand, Harry 
thought), and so they disappeared. That evening we had a great 
panic, the cowboy coming at milking-time riding one of our horses, 
which he had found grazing at the outer park-wall. 

All night my Lady Viscountess was in a very quiet and subdued 
mood. She scarce found fault with anybody ; she played at cards 
for six hours ; little page Esmond went to sleep. He prayed for 
my Lord and the good cause before closing his eyes. 

It was quite in the grey of the morning when the porter’s bell 
rang, and old Lockwood, waking up, let in one of my Lord’s 


50 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

servants, wlio had gone with him in the morning, and who returned 
with a melancholy story. The officer who rode up to my Lord 
had, it appeared, said to him, ,that it was his duty to inform his 
Lordship that he was not under arrest, but under surveillance, and 
to request him not to ride abroad that day. 

My Lord replied that riding was good for his health, that if the 
Captain chose to accompany him he was welcome ; and it was then 
that he made a bow, and they cantered away together. 

When he came on to Wansey Down, my Lord all of a sudden 
pulled up, and the party came to a halt at the crossway. 

“ Sir,” says he to the officer, “ we are four to two : will you be 
so kind as to take that road, and leave me to go mine ? ” 

“ Your road is mine, my Lord,” says the officer. 

“ Then — ” says my Lord ; but he had no time to say more, for 
the officer, drawing a pistol, snapped it at his Lordship ; as at the 
same moment Father Holt, drawing a pistol, shot the officer through 
the head. It was done, and the man dead in an instant of time. 
The orderly, gazing at the officer, looked scared for a moment, and 
galloped away for his life. 

“ Fire ! fire ! ” cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after 
the trooper, but the two servants were too much simprised to use 
their pieces, and my Lord calling to them to hold their hands, the 
fellow got away. 

“Mr. Holt, qui ‘penmit a tout^' says Blaise, “gets off his 
horse, examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his 
money to us two, and says, ‘ The wine is drawn, M. le Marquis,’ — 
why did he say Marquis to M. le Vicomte'? — ‘ we must drink it.’ 

“ The poor gentleman’s horse was a better one than that I 
rode,” Blaise continues : “ Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I 
gave a cut to Whitefoot, and she trotted home. We rode on 
towards Newbury ; we heard firing towards mid-day : at two o’clock 
a horseman comes up to us as we were giving our cattle water at 
an inn — and says, ‘ All is done ! The Ecossais declared an hour 
too soon — General Ginckel was down upon them.’ The whole thing 
was at an end. 

“ ‘ And we’ve shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,’ 
says my Lord. 

“ ‘ Blaise,’ says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, 
one for my Lady, and one for you. Master Harry ; ‘ you must go 
back to Castle wood, and deliver these,’ and behold me.” 

And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to liimself, 
which only said, “ Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. 
You know nothing about anything.” Harry read this, ran upstairs 
to his mistress’s apartment, where her gentlewoman slept near to 


THE SOLDIERS ARRIVE 


51 


the door, made her bring a light and wake my Lady, into whose 
liands he gave tlie paper. She was a wonderful object to look at 
in her night attire, nor had HaiTy ever seen the like. 

As soon as she had the paper in her liand, Harry stepped back 
to the Chaplain’s room, opened the secret cupboard over the fire- 
place, burned all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest 
do before, took down one of liis reverence’s manuscript sermons, 
and half burnt that in the brazier. By the time the papers were 
quite destroyed it was daylight. Harry ran back to his mistress 
again. Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her Ladyship’s 
chamber ; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid 
the coach be got ready, and that she would ride away anon. 

But the mysteries of her Ladyship’s toilet were as awfully long 
on this day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, 
my Lady was still attiring herself. And just as the Viscountess 
stepped forth ‘from her room, ready for departure, young John 
Lockwood comes running up from the village with news that a 
lawyer, three officers, and twenty or four-and-twenty soldiers, were 
marching thence upon the house. John had but two minutes the 
start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the troop rode 
into our courtyard. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE ISSUE OF THE PLOTS— THE DEATH OF THOMAS, THIRD 
VISCOUNT OF CASTLEWOOD ; AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF 
HIS VISCOUNTESS 

' first my Lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to 



whom she fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and. 


^ stroking her scraggy neck, said, “They will find Isabel of 
Castle wood is equal to her fate.” Her gentlewoman, Victoire, 
persuaded her that her prudent course was. as she could not fiy, 
to receive the troops as though she suspected nothing, and that 
her chamber was the best place Avherein to await them. So her 
black Japan casket, which Harry was to carry to the coach, was 
taken back to her Ladyship’s chamber, whither the maid and 
mistress retired. Victoire came out presently, bidding the j^age to 
say her Ladyship was ill, confined to her bed with the rheumatism. 

By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. Harry 
Esmond saw them from the window of the tapestry parlour; a 
couple of sentinels were posted at the gate — a half-dozen more 
walked towards the stable ; and some others, preceded by their 
commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were conducted 
by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of the 
house which my Lord and Lady inhabited. 

So the Captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came 
through the ante-room to the tapestry parlour, and where now was 
nobody but young Harry Esmond, the page. 

“Tell your mistress, little man,” says the Captain kindly, 
“ that we must speak to her.” 

“ My mistress is ill a-bed,” said the page. 

“ What complaint has she 1 ” asked the Captain. 

The boy said, “ The rheumatism.” 

“Rheumatism! that’s a sad complaint,” continues the good- 
natured Captain ; “ and the coach is in the yard to fetch the Doctor, 
I suppose'?” 

“ I don’t know,” says tlie boy. 

“ And how long has her Ladyship been ill *? ” 

“ I don’t know,” says the boy. 


LADY CASTLEWOOD’S SICKNESS 53 

“ When did my Lord go away 1 ” 

“Yesterday night.” 

“With Father Holtl” 

“With Mr. Holt.” 

“ And which way did they travel?” asks the lawyer. 

“ They travelled without me,” says the page. 

“We must see Lady Castle wood.” 

“ I have orders that nobody goes in to her Ladyship — she is 
sick,” says the page ; but at this moment Victoire came out. 
“ Hush ! ” says she ; and, as if not knowing that any one was near, 
“What’s this noise?” says she. “Is this gentleman the Doctor?” 

“ Stuff ! we must see Lady Castle wood,” says the lawyer, 
pushing by. 

The curtains of her Ladyship’s room were down, and the 
chamber dark, and she was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and 
propped up by her pillows, looking none the less ghastly because 
of the red which was still on her cheeks, and which she could not 
afford to forego. 

“ Is that the Doctor ? ” she said. 

“ There is no use with this deception, madam,” Captain West- 
bury said (for so he was named). “ My duty is to arrest the person 
of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, a nonjuring peer^ — of Robert 
Tusher, Vicar of Castlewood — and Henry Holt, known under 
various other names and designations, a Jesuit priest, who officiated 
as chaplain here in the late king’s time, and is now at the head of 
the conspiracy which was about to break out in this country against 
the authority of their Majesties King William and Queen Mary — 
and my orders are to search the house for such papers or traces of 
the conspiracy as may be found here. Your Ladyship will please 
to give me your keys, and it will be as well for yourself that you 
should help us, in every way, in our search.” 

“ You see, sir, that I have the rheumatism, and cannot move,” 
said the lady, looking uncommonly ghastly, as she sat up in her 
bed, where, however, she had had her cheeks painted, and a new 
cap put on, so that she might at least look her best when the 
officers came. 

“ I shall take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that 
your Ladyship, in case you should wish to rise, may have an arm 
to lean on,” Captain Westbury said. “Your woman will show me 
where I am to look ; ” and Madame Victoire, chattering in her half 
French and half English jargon, opened while the Captain examined 
one drawer after another; but, as Harry Esmond thought, rather 
carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if he was only conducting 
the examination for form’s sake. 


54 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretcli- 
ing out her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, “ Non, jamais, 
monsieur I’officier ! Jamais ! I will rather die than let you see 
this wardrobe.” 

But Captain Westbury would open it, still with a smile on his 
face, which, when the box was opened, turned into a fair burst of 
laughter. It contained — not papers regarding the conspiracy — but 
my Lady’s wigs, washes, and rouge-pots, and Victoire said men 
were monsters, as the Captain went on with his perquisition. He 
tapped the back to see whether or no it was hollow, and as he 
thrust his hands into the cupboard, my Lady from her bed called 
out, with a voice that did not sound like that of a very sick woman, 
“ Is it your commission to insidt ladies as well as to arrest gentle- 
men, Captain?” 

“ These articles are only dangerous when worn by your Lady- 
ship,” the Captain said, with a low bow, and a mock grin of 
politeness. “ I have found nothing which concerns the Government 
as yet — only the weapons with which beauty is authorised to kill,” 
says he, pointing to a wig with his sword-tip. “We must now 
proceed to search the rest of the house.” 

“You are not going to leave that wretch in the room with me ? ” 
cried my Lady, pointing to the soldier. 

“ What can I do, madam ? Somebody you must have to smooth 
your pillow and bring your medicine — permit me ” 

“ Sir ! ” screamed out my Lady. 

“ Madam, if you are too ill to leave the bed,” the Captain then 
said, rather sternly, “ I must have in four of my men to lift you 
off ill the sheet. I must examine this bed, in a word ; papers may 
be hidden in a bed as elsewhere ; we know that very well, and ” 

Here it was her Ladyship’s turn to shriek, for the Captain, with 
his fist shaking the pillows and bolsters, at last came to “ burn ” as 
they say in the play of forfeits, and wrenching away one of the 
pillows, said, “ Look ! did not I tell you so ? Here is a pillow 
stuffed with paper.” 

“ Some villain has betrayed us,” cried out my Lady, sitting up 
in the bed, showing herself full dressed under her night-rail. 

“ And now your Ladyship can move, I am sure ; permit me 
to give you my hand to rise. You will have to travel for some 
distance, as far as Hexton Castle, to-night. Will you have your 
coach ? Your woman shall attend you if you like — and the Japan 
box 1 ” 

“ Sir ! you don’t strike a man when he is down,” said my Lady, 
with some dignity : “ can you not spare a woman '% ” 

“Your Ladyship must please to rise, and let me search the 


THEY SEEK FOR PAPERS 55 

bed, said the Captain ; “ there is no more time to lose in bandying 
talk.” 

And, without more ado, the gaunt old woman got up. Harry 
Esmond recollected to the end of his life that figure with the 
brocade dress and the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red 
stockings, and white red-heeled shoes, sitting up in the bed, and 
stepping down from it. The trunks were ready packed for depart- 
ure in her ante-room, and the horses ready harnessed in the stable : 
about all which the Captain seemed to know, by information got 
from some quarter or other ; and whence Esmond could make a 
pretty shrewd guess in aftertimes, when Doctor Tusher complained 
that King William’s government had basely treated him for services 
done in that Cause. 

And here he may relate, though he was then too young to know 
all that was happening, what the papers contained, of which Captain 
Westbury had made a seizure, and which papers had been trans- 
ferred from the Japan box to the bed when the officers arrived. 

There was a list of gentlemen of the county in Father Holt’s 
handwriting — Mr. Freeman’s (King James’s) friends — a similar 
paper being found among those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Cople- 
stone, who suffered death for this conspiracy. 

There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond 
on my Lord Castlewood and the heirs-male of his body ; his appoint- 
ment as Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and Major-General.* 

There were various letters from the nobility and gentry, some 
ardent and some doubtful, in the King’s service ; and (very luckily 
for him) two letters concerning Colonel Francis Esmond : one from 
Father Holt, which said, “ I have been to see this Colonel at his 
house at Walcote, near to Wells, where he resides since the King’s 
departure, and pressed him very eagerly in Mr. Freeman’s cause, 
showing him the great advantage he would have by trading with 
that merchant, offering him large premiums there as agreed between 
us. But he says no : he considers Mr. Freeman the head of the 
firm, will never trade against him or embark with any other trading 
company, but considers his duty was done when Mr. Freeman left 
England. This Colonel seems to care more for his wife and his 

* To have this rank of Marquis restored in the family had always been my 
Lady Viscountess’s ambition ; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara Topham, the 
goldsmith’s daughter, dying about this time, and leaving all her property to Lady 
Castlewood, I have heard that her Ladyship sent almost the wliole of the money 
to King James, a proceeding which so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he 
actually went to the parish church, and was only appeased by the Marquis’s 
title which his exiled Majesty sent to him in return for the ^^15,000 his faithful 
subject lent him. 


56 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


beagles than for affairs. He asked me much about young H. E., 
‘ that bastard,’ as he called him ; doubting my Lord’s intentions 
respecting him. I reassured him on this head, stating what I knew 
of the lad, and our intentions respecting him, but with regard to 
Freeman he was inflexible.” 

And another letter was from Colonel Esmond to his kinsman, 
to say tliat one Captain Holton had been witli him offering him 
large bribes to join, know who^ and saying that the head of the 
house of Castlewood was deeply engaged in that quarter. But for 
his part he had broke his sword when the K. left the country, and 
would never again fight in that quarrel. The P. of 0. was a man, 
at least, of a noble courage, and his duty, and, as he thought, every 
Englishman’s, was to keep the country quiet, and the French out 
of it ; and, in fine, that he would have nothing to- do with the 
scheme. 

Of the existence of these two letters and the contents of the 
pillow. Colonel Frank Esmond, who became Viscount Castlewood, 
told Henry Esmond afterwards, when the letters were shown to 
his Lordship, who congratulated himself, as he had good reason, 
that he had not joined in the scheme which proved so fatal to 
many concerned in it. But, naturally, the lad knew little about 
these circumstances when they happened under his eyes : only 
being aware that his patron and his mistress were in some trouble, 
which had caused the flight of the one and the apprehension of 
the other by the officers of King William. 

The seizure of the papers effected, the gentlemen did not pursue 
their further search through Castlewood House very rigorously. 
They examined. Mr. Holt’s room, being led thither by his pupil, 
who showed, as the Father had bidden him, the place where the 
key of his chamber lay, opened the door for the gentlemen, and 
conducted them into the room. 

When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the 
brazier, they examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide 
was a little amused at their perplexity. 

“ What are these ? ” says one. 

“They’re written in a foreign language,” says the lawyer. 
“ What are you laughing at, little whelp ? ” adds he, turning round 
as he saw the boy smile. 

“Mr. Holt said they were sermons,” Harry said, “and bade 
me to burn them ; ” which indeed was true of those papers. 

“ Sermons indeed — it’s treason, I would lay a wager,” cries the 
lawyer. 

“ Egad ! it’s Greek to me,” says Captain Westbury. “ Can 
you read it, little boy ? ” 


DICK THE SCHOLAR 57 

“Yes, sir, a little,” Harry said. 

“ Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril,” said the 
lawyer. And Harry began to translate : — 

“ ‘ Hath not one of your own writers said, “ The children of 
Adam are now labouring as much as he himself ever did, about 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, shaking the boughs 
thereof, and seeking the fruit, being for the most part unmindful 
of the tree of life.” 0 blind generation ! ’tis this tree of knowledge 
to which the serpent has led you ’ ” — and here the boy was obliged 
to stop, the rest of the page being charred by the fire : and asked 
of the lawyer, “ Shall I go on, sir ? ” 

The lawyer said, “ This boy is deeper than he seems ; who 
knows that he is not laughing at us ^ ” 

“Let’s have in Dick the Scholar,” cried Captain Westbury, 
laughing : and he called to a trooper out of the window— “ Ho, 
Dick ! come in here and construe.” 

A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humoured face, came in 
at the summons, saluting his officer. 

“ Tell us what is this, Dick,” says the lawyer. 

“ My name is Steele, sir,” says the soldier. “ I may be Dick 
for my friends, but I don’t name gentlemen of your cloth amongst 
them.” 

“Well then, Steele.” 

“ Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman 
of his Majesty’s Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar.” 

“ I didn’t know, sir,” said the lawyer. 

“ How should you ? I take it you are not accustomed to meet 
with gentlemen,” says the trooper. 

“Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,” says Westbury. 

“’Tis Latin,” says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting 
his officer, “ and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth’s ; ” and he 
translated the words pretty much as Henry Esmond had ren- 
dered them. 

“ What a young scholar you are ! ” says the Captain to the boy. 

“ Depend on’t, he knows more than he tells,” says the lawyer. 
“ I think we will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel.” 

“ For construing a bit of Latin 1 ” said the Captain, very good- 
naturedly. 

“ I would as lief go there as anywhere,” Harry Esmond said 
simply, “for there is nobody to care for me.” 

There must have been something touching in the child’s voice, 
or in this description of his solitude — for tlie Captain looked at him 
very good-naturedly, and the trooper called Steele put his hand 
kindly on the lad’s head, and said some words in the Latin tongue. 


.58 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“ What does he say ? ” says the lawyer. 

“ Faith, ask Dick yourself,” cried Captain Westbury. 

“ I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had 
learned to succour the miserable, and that’s not your trade, Mr. 
Sheepskin,” said the trooper. 

“You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet,” 
the Captain said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind 
face and kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion. 

The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach ; and the 
Countess and Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle. 
This woman, who quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was 
melted at parting with him, and called him “dear angel,” and 
“ poor infant,” and a hundred other names. 

The Viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him 
always be faithful to the house of Esmond. “ If evil should happen 
to my Lord,” says she, “ his successor, I trust, will be found, and 
give you protection. Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak 
their vengeance on me now” And she kissed a medal she wore 
with great fervour, and Henry Esmond knew not in the least what 
her meaning was ; but hath since learned that, old as she was, she 
was for ever expecting, by the good offices of saints and relics, to 
have an heir to the title of Esmond. 

Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the 
secrets of politics in which his patrons were implicated ; for they 
put but few questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and 
looked much younger than his age), and such questions as they put 
he answered cautiously enough, and professing even more ignorance 
than he had, for which his examiners willingly enough gave him 
credit. He did not say a word about the window or the cupboard 
over the fireplace ; and these secrets quite escaped the eyes of the 
searchers. 

So then my Lady was consigned to her coach, and sent off to 
Hexton, with her woman and the man of law to bear her company, 
a couple of troopere riding on either side of the coach. And Harry 
was left behind at the Hall, belonging as it were to nobody, and 
quite alone in the world. The captain and a guard of men remained 
in possession there ; and the soldiers, who were very good-natured 
and kind, ate my Lord’s mutton and drank his wine, and made 
themselves comfortable, as they well might do in such pleasant 
quarters. 

The captains had their dinner served in my Lord’s tapestry 
parlour, and poor little Harry thought his duty was to wait upon 
Captain Westbury’s chair, as his custom had been to serve his Lord 
when he sat there. 


AN ARMY OF MARTYRS 


59 

After the departure of the Countess, Dick the Scholar took 
Harry Esmond under his speciid protection, and would examine 
him in his humanities, and talk to him both of French and Latin, 
in which tongues the lad found, and his new friend was willing 
enough to acknowledge, that he was even more proficient than 
Scholar Dick. Hearing that he liad learned them from a Jesuit, in 
the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of 
speaking, Dick, rather to the boy’s surprise, who began to have an 
early shrewdness, like many children bred up alone, showed a great 
deal of theological science, and knowledge' of the points at issue 
between the two churches ; so that he and Harry would have hours 
of controversy together, in which the boy was certainly worsted by 
the arguments of this singular trooper. “lam no common soldier,” 
Dick would say, and indeed it was easy to see by his learning, 
breeding, and many accomplishments, that he was not. “lam of one 
of the most ancient families in the empire ; I have had my education 
at a famous school, and a famous university; I learned my first 
rudiments of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the martyrs 
were roasted.” 

“You hanged as many of ours,” interposed Harry; “and, for 
the matter of persecution. Father Holt told me that a young gentle- 
man of Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, student at the college 
there, was hanged for heresy only last year, though he recanted, and 
solemnly asked pardon for his errors.” 

“ Faith ! there has been two much persecution on both sides : 
but ’twas you taught us.” 

“Nay, ’twas the Pagans began it,” cried the lad, and began to 
instance a number of saints of the Church, from the Protomartyr 
downwards — “ this one’s fire went out under him : that one’s oil 
cooled in the caldron : at a third holy head the executioner chopped 
three times and it would not come off. Show us martyrs in your 
Church for whom such miracles have been done.” 

“ Nay,” says the trooper gravely, “ the miracles of the first three 
centuries belong to my Church as M^ell as yours. Master Papist,” and 
then added, with something of a smile upon his countenance, and a 
(pieer look at Harry — “ And yet, my little catechiser, I have some- 
times thought about those miracles, that there was not much good 
in them, since the victim’s head always finished by coming off at the 
third or fourth chop, and the caldron, if it did not boil one day, 
boiled the next. Howbeit, in our times, the Church has lost that 
questionable advantage of respites. There never was a shower to 
put out Ridley’s fire, nor an angel to turn the edge of Campion’s axe. 
The rack tore the limbs of South Avell the Jesuit and Sympson the 
Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere multitudes die willingly 


()0 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


enough. I have read in Monsieur Ry cant’s ‘ History of the Turks,’ 
of thousands of Mahomet’s followers rushing upon death in battle as 
upon certain Paradise ; and in the Great Mogul’s dominions people 
fling themselves by hundreds under the cars of the idols annually, 
and the widows burn themselves on their husbands’ bodies, as ’tis 
w*ell kflown. ’Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard. Master 
Harry — every man of every nation has done that — ’tis the living up 
to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost,” he added with a sigh. 
“ And ah ! ” he added, “ my poor lad, I am not strong enough to 
convince thee by my liffi — though to die for my religion would give 
me the greatest of joys — but I had a dear friend in Magdalen College 
in Oxford : I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, as he 
quickly could — for I think he’s a match for the whole College of 
Jesuits ; and what’s more, in his life too. In that very sermon of 
Doctor Cudworth’s which your priest was quoting from, and which 
suffered martyrdom in the brazier ” — Dick added with a smile, “ I 
had a thought of wearing the black coat (but was ashamed of my 
life, you see, and took to this sorry red one) ; I have often thought 
of Joe Addison — Doctor Cud worth says, ‘ A good conscience is the 
best looking-glass of heaven ’ — and there’s a serenity in my friend’s 
face which always reflects it — I wish you could see him, Harry.” 

“Did he do you a great deal of good?” asked the lad simply. 

“ He might have done,” said the other — “ at least he taught me to 
see and approve better things. ’Tis my own fault, deteriora sequin 

“You seem very good,” the boy said. 

“ I’m not what I seem, alas ! ” answered the trooper — and indeed, 
as it turned out, poor Dick told the truth — for that very night, at 
supper in the hall, where ,the gentlemen of the troop took their 
repasts, and passed most part of their days dicing and smoking of 
tobacco, and singing and cursing, over the Castlewood ale — Harry 
Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woeful state of drunkenness. 
He hiccupped out a sermon ; and his laughing companions bade 
him sing a hymn, on which Dick, swearing he would run the 
scoundrel through the body who insulted his religion, made for his 
sword, which was hanging on the wall, and fell down flat on the 
floor under it, saying to Harry, who ran forward to help him, “ Ah, 
little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was here ! ” 

Though the troopers of the King’s Life Guards were all gentle- 
men, yet the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boors 
to Harry Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal 
Steele the Scholar, and Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who 
were always kind to the lad. They remained for some weeks or months 
encamped in Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to 
time, how the lady at Hexton Castle was treated, and the particulars 


THE DOWAGER IN PRISON 


6l 


of her confinement there. ’Tis known that King William was disposed 
to deal very leniently with the gentry who remained faithful to the 
old King’s cause ; and no prince usurping a crown, as his enemies 
said he did (righteously taking it, as I think now), ever caused less 
blood to be shed. As for women conspirators, he kept spies on the 
least dangerous, and locked up the others. Lady Castlewobd had 
the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the gaoler’s garden to walk 
in ; and though she repeatedly desired to be led out to execution, 
like Mary, Queen of Scots, there never was any thought of taking 
her painted old head otf, or any desire to do aught but keep her 
person in security. 

And it appeared she found that some were friends in her mis- 
fortune, whom she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst 
enemies. Colonel Francis Esmond, my Lord’s cousin and her 
Ladyship’s, who had married the Dean of Winchester’s daughter, 
and, since King James’s departure out of England, had lived not 
very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his kinswoman’s strait, 
and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for King William 
in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came to visit 
her Ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle’s daughter any friendly 
services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and 
little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child 
of great beauty and many winning ways, the old Viscountess took 
not a little liking, although between her Ladyship and the child’s 
mother there was little more love than formerly. There are some 
injuries which women never forgive one another: and Madam 
Francis Esmond, in marrying her cousin, had done one of those 
irretrievable wrongs to Lady Castlewood. But as she was now 
humiliated, and in misfortune. Madam Francis could allow a truce 
to her enmity, and could be kind for a while, at least, to her 
liusband’s discarded mistress. So the little Beatrix, her daughter, 
was permitted often to go and visit the imprisoned Viscountess, 
wlio, in so far as the child and its father were concerned, got to 
abate in her anger towards that branch of the Castlewood family. 
And the letters of Colonel Esmond coming to light, as has been 
said, and his conduct being known to the King’s Council, the 
Colonel was put in a better position with the existing govern- 
ment than he had ever before been; any suspicions regarding his 
loyalty were entirely done away ; and so he was enabled to be of 
more service to his kinswoman than he could otherwise have been. 

And now there befell an event by which this lady recovered her 
liberty, and the house of Castlewood got a new owner, and fatherless 
little Harry Esmond a new and most kind protector and friend. 
Whatever that secret was which Harry was to hear from my Lord, 


62 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


the boy never heard it ; for that night when Father Holt arrived, 
and carried my Lord away with him, Avas tlie last on which Harry 
ever saw his patron. What happened to my Lord may be briefly 
told here. Having found the liorses at the place where they were 
lying, my Lord and Father Holt rode together to Chatteris, where 
they had temporary refuge with one of the Father’s penitents in 
that city ; but the pursuit being hot for them, and the reward for 
the apprehension of one or the other considerable, it was deemed 
advisable tliat they should separate ; and the priest betook himself 
to other places of retreat known to him, whilst my Lord passed over 
from Bristol into Ireland, in which kingdom King James had a court 
and an army. My Lord was but a small addition to this ; bringing, 
indeed, only his sword and the few pieces in his pocket ; but the 
King received him with some kindness and distinction in spite of 
his poor plight, confirmed him in his new title of Marquis, gave him 
a regiment, and promised him further promotion. But title or 
promotion were not to benefit him now. , My Lord was wounded 
at the fatal battle of the Boyne, flying from which field (long after 
his master had set him an example) he lay for a while concealed in 
the marshy country near to the town of Trim, and more from 
catarrh and fever caught in the bogs than from the steel of the 
enemy in the battle, sank and died. May the earth lie light upon 
Thomas of Castlewood ! He who writes this must speak in charity, 
tliough this lord did him and his two grievous wrongs : for one of 
these he would have made amends, perhaps, had life been spared 
him ; but the other lay beyond his power to repair, though ’tis to 
be hoped that a greater Power than a priest has absolved liim of it. ; 
He got the comfort of this 'absolution, too, such as it was : a priest | 
of Trim writing a letter to my Lady to inform her of this calamity. | 

But in those days letters were slow of travelling, and our i 
priest’s took two months or more on its journey from Ireland to j 
England : where, when it did arrive, it did not find my Lady at | 
her own house ; she was at the King’s house of Hexton Castle when | 
the letter came to Castlewood, but it was opened for all that by 
the officer in command there. 

Harry Esmond well remembered the receipt of this letter, whicli 
Lockwood brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant 
were on the Green playing at bowls, -young Esmond looking on at 
the sport, or reading his book in the arbour. | 

“Here’s news for Frank Esmond,” says Captain Westbury. 

“ Harry, did you ever see Colonel Esmond ? ” And Captain West- 
bury looked very hard at the boy as he spoke. 

Harry said he had seen him but once when he was at Hexton, I 
at the ball there. I 


POOR HARRY AND POOR DICK 


63 


“ And did he say anything 1 ” 

“ He said what I don’t care to repeat,” Harry answered. For 
he was now twelve yeai-s of age ; he knew what his birth was, and 
the disgrace of it ; and he felt no love towards the man who had 
most likely stained his mother’s honour and his own. 

“ Did you love my Lord Castlewood 'I ” 

“ I wait until I know my mother, sir, to say,” the boy answered, 
liis eyes filling with tears. 

“ Something has happened to Lord Castlewood,” Captain West- 
bury said in a very grave tone — “something which must happen to 
us all. He is dead of a wound received at the Boyne, fighting for 
King James.” 

“ I am glad my Lord fought for the right cause,” the boy said. 

“ It was better to meet death on the field like a man, than face 
it on Tower Hill, as some of them may,” continued Mr. Westbury. 
“ I hope he has made some testament, or provided for thee some- 
how. This letter says he recommends unicum Jilium mum dilec- 
tissimu7)i to his Lady. I hope he has left you more than that.” 

Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of Heaven 
and Fate ; but more lonely now, as it seemed to him, than he had 
been all the rest of his life ; and that night, as he lay in his little 
room which he still occupied, the boy thought with many a pang 
of shame and grief of his strange and solitary condition ; — how he 
had a father and no father; a nameless mother that had been 
brouglit to ruin, perhaps, by that very father whom Harry could 
only acknowledge in secret and with a blush, and whom he could 
neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how Father 
Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances of the 
last six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide 
world, where he was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full 
of love, and he longed as he lay in the darkness there for some one 
upon whom he could bestow it. He remembers, and must to his 
dying day, the thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours 
tolling through it. Who was he, and what? Why here rather 
than elsewhere 1 I have a mind, he thought, to go to that priest 
at Trim, and find out what my father said to him on his death-bed 
confession. Is there any child in the whole world so unprotected 
as I am ? Shall I get up and quit this place, and run to Ireland ? 
With these thoughts and tears the lad passed that night away 
until he wept himself to sleep. 

The next day, the gentlemen of the guard, who had heard what 
had befallen him, were more than usually kind to the child, especi- 
ally his friend Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father’s 
death, which had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not 


64 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


quite five years of age. “ Tliat was the first sensation of grief,” 
Dick said, “ I ever knew. I remember I went into the room ‘ 
where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I liad ‘ 
my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the cofiin, and calling j 
papa ; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me j 
in a flood of tears papa could not liear me, and would play with 
me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence 
he could never come to us again. And this,” said Dick kindly, 

“ has made me pity all children ever since ; and caused me to love 
thee, my poor fatherless, motherless lad. And, if ever thou wantest 
a friend, thou shalt have one in Richard Steele.” 

Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could 
Corporal Steele do for him ? take him to ride a spare horse, and be 
servant to the troop? Though there might be a bar in Harry 
Esmond’s shield, it was a noble one. The counsel of the two j 
friends was, that little Harry should stay where he was, and abide | 
his fortune ; so Esmond stayed on at Castlewood, awaiting with no ' 
small anxiety the fate, whatever it was, which was over him. ' 


CHAPTER VII 


1 AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND MOST 
KIND PROTECTORS THERE 

URING the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, honest Dick 



the Scholar was the constant companion of the lonely little 


^ ^ orphan lad, Harry Esmond : and they read together, and they 
played bowls together, and when the other troopers or their officers, 
who were free-spoken over their cups (as was the way of that day, 
when neither men nor women were over-nice), talked unbecomingly 
of their amours and gallantries before the child, Dick, who very 
likely was setting the whole company laughing, would stop their 
jokes with a 7/iaxima debetur pueris revere7itia, and once offered to 
lug out against another trooper called Hulking Tom, who wanted to 
ask Harry Esmond a ribald question. 

Also Dick, seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility 
above his years, and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided 
to Harry his love for a vintner’s daughter, near to the Tollyard, 
Westminster, whom Dick addressed as Saccharissa in many verses 
of his composition, and without wliom he said it would be impos- 
sible that he could continue to live. He vowed this a thousand 
times in a day, though Harry smiled to see the love-lorn swain had 
his health and appetite as well as the most heart-whole trooper in 
the regiment : and he swore Harry to secrecy too, which vow the 
lad religiously kept, until he found that officers and privates were 
all taken into Dick’s confidence, and had the benefit of his verses. 
And it must be owned likewise that, while Dick was sighing after 
Saccharissa in London, he liad consolations in the country ; for 
there came a wench out of Castlewood village who had washed his 
linen, and who cried sadly when she heard he was gone : and with- 
out paying her bill too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to 
discharge by giving the girl a silver pocket-piece, which Scholar 
Dick had presented to him, when, with many embraces and prayers 
for his prosperity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of Castlewood 
being ordered away. Dick the Scholar said he would never forget 
his young fnend, nor indeed did he : and Harry was sorry when the 
kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking forward with no small 
7 E 


66 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

anxiety (for care and solitude had made him thoughtful beyond his 
years) to his fate when the new lord and lady of the house came to 
live there. He had lived to be past twelve years old now ; and had 
never had a friend, save this wild trooper perhaps, and Father Holt; 
and had a fond and affectionate heart, tender to weakness, that 
woidd fain attach itself to somebody, and did not seem at rest until 
it had found a friend who would take charge of it. 

The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the 
gracious person, the fair apparition of whose beauty and kindness 
had so moved him when he first beheld her, became soon a devoted 
affection and passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young 
heart, that as yet, except in the case of dear Father Holt, had had 
very little kindness for which to be thankful. 0 Dea certe, thought 
he, remembering the lines of the ./Eneis which Mr. Holt had taught 
him. There seemed, as the boy thought, in every look or gesture 
of this fair creature, an angelical softness and bright pity — in motion 
or repose she seemed gracious alike ; the tone of her voice, though 
she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted 
almost to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of twelve 
years of age, little more than a menial, felt for an exalted lady, his 
mistress : but it was worship. To catch her glance, to divine her 
errand and run on it before she had spoken it ; to watch, follow, 
adore her; became the business of his life. Meanwhile, as is the 
way often, his idol had idols of her own, and never thought of or 
suspected the admiration of her little pigmy adorer. 

My Lady had on her side her three idols : first and foremost, 
Jove and supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry’s patron, the good 
Viscount of Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her. If 
he had a headache, she was ill. If he frowned, she trembled. If 
he joked, she smiled and was charmed. If he went a-hunting, she 
was always at the window to see him ride away, her little son 
crowing on her arm, or on the watch till his return. She made 
dishes for his dinner : spiced his wine for him : made the toast for 
his tankard at breakfast : hushed the house when he slept in his 
chair, and watched for a look when he woke. If my Lord was not 
a little proud of his beauty, my Lady adored it. She clung to his 
arm as he paced the terrace, her two fair little hands clasped round 
his great one ; her eyes were never tired of looking in his face and 
wondering at its perfection. Her little son was his son, and had 
his father’s look and curly brown hair. Her daughter Beatrix was 
his daughter, and had his eyes — were there ever such beautiful eyes 
in the world ? All the house was arranged so as to bring him ease 
and give him pleasure. She liked the small gentry round about to 
come and pay him court, never caring for admiration for herself ; 


A PRIESTESS 


67 

those who wanted to be well with the lady must admire him. Not 
regarding her dress, she would wear a gown to rags, because he had 
once liked it : and, if he brought her a brooch or a ribbon, would 
prefer it to all the most costly articles of her wardrobe. 

My Lord went to London every year for six weeks, and the 
family being too poor to aj^pear at Court with any figure, he went 
alone. It was not until he was out of sight that her face showed 
any sorrow ; and what a joy when he came back ! What prepara- 
tion before his return ! The fond creature had his armchair at the 
chimney-side — delighting to put the children in it, and look at them 
there. Nobody took his place at the table ; but his silver tankard 
stood there as when my Lord was present. 

A pretty siglit it was to see, during my Lord’s absence, or on 
those many mornings when sleep or headache kept him a-bed, this 
fair young lady of Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and 
her domestics gathered round her, reading the Morning Prayer of 
the English Church. Esmond long remembered how she looked and 
spoke, kneeling reverently before the sacred book, the sun shining 
upon her golden hair until it made a halo round about her. A 
dozen of the servants of the house kneeled in a line opposite their 
mistress. For a while Harry Esmond kept apart from these 
mysteries, but Doctor Tusher showing him that the prayers read 
were those of the Church of all ages, and the boy’s own inclination 
prompting him to be always as near as he might to his mistress, 
and to think all things she did right, from listening to the prayers 
in the ante-chamber, he came presently to kneel down with the rest 
of the household in the parlour; and before a couple of years my 
Lady had made a thorough convert. Indeed the boy loved his 
catechiser so much that he would have subscribed to anything she 
bade him, and was never tired of listening to her fond discourse and 
simple comments upon the book, which she read to him in a voice 
of which it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion and tender 
appealing kindness. This friendly controversy, and the intimacy 
which it occasioned, bound the lad more fondly than ever to his 
mistress. The happiest period of all his life was this; and the 
young mother, with her daughter and son, and tlie orphan lad 
whom she protected, read and worked and played, and were children 
together. If the lady looked forward — as what fond woman does 
not? — towards the future, she had no plans from which Harry 
Esmond was left out ; and a thousand and a thousand times, in his 
passionate and impetuous way, he vowed that no power should 
separate him from his mistress ; and only asked for some chance 
to happen by which he miglit show his fidelity to her. Now, at 
the close of Ins life, as lie sits and recalls in tranquillity the happy 


6*8 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and busy scenes of it, he can think, not ungratetully, that he lias 
been taithful to that early vow. Such a life is so simple that years 
may be chronicled in a few lines. But few men’s life-voyages are 
destined to be all jirosperous ; and this calm of which we are 
speaking was soon to come to an end. 

As Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found of necessity 
much to read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk who 
had admitted him to join hand with them. He read more books 
than they cared to study with him ; was alone in the midst of 
them many a time, and passed nights over labours, futile perhaps, 
but in which they could not join him. His dear mistress divined 
his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of affection : began 
to forebode a time when he would escape from his home-nest ; and, 
at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only sigh and 
shake her head. Before those fatal decrees in life are executed, 
there are always secret previsions and warning omens. When 
everything yet seems calm, we are aware that the storm is coming. 
Ere the happy days were over, two at least of that home-party felt 
that they were drawing to a close ; and were uneasy, and on the 
look-out for the cloud which was to obscure their calm. 

’Twas easy for Harry to see, however much his lady persisted 
in obedience and admiration for her husband, that my Lord tired 
of his quiet life, and gi-ew weary, and then testy, at those gentle 
bonds with which his wife would have held him. As they say the 
Grand Lama of Thibet is very much fatigued by his character of 
divinity, and yawns on his altar as his bonzes kneel and worship 
him, many a home-god grows heartily sick of the reverence with 
which his family-devotees pursue him, and sighs for freedom and 
for his old life, and to be off the pedestal on which his dependants 
would have him sit for ever, whilst they adore him, and ply him 
with flowers, and hymns, and incense, and flattery ; — so, after a 
few years of his marriage my honest Lord Castlewood began to 
tire ; all the high-flown raptures and devotional ceremonies with 
which his wife, his chief-priestess, treated him, first sent him to 
sleep, and then drove him out of doors ; for the truth must be told, 
that my Lord was a jolly gentleman, with very little of the august 
or divine in his nature, though his fond wife persisted in revering 
it — and, besides, he had to pay a penalty for this love, which 
persons of liis disposition seldom like to defray : and, in a word, 
if he had a loving wife, had a very jealous and exacting one. Then 
he wearied of this jealousy ; then he broke away from it ; then 
came, no doubt, complaints and recriminations ; then, perhaps, 
promises of amendment not fulfilled ; then upbraidings not the 
more pleasant because they were silent, and only sad looks and 


IDOL WORSHIP 


^9 

tearful eyes conveyed them. Then, perliaps, tlie pair reached tliat 
other stage which is not uncommon in married life, when the 
woman perceives that the god of the honeymoon is a god no more • 
only a mortal like the rest of us — and so she looks into her heart, 
and lo ! vacuce sedes et inania arcana. And now, supposing our 
lady to have a fine genius and a brilliant wit of her own, and the 
magic spell and infatuation removed from her which had led her 
to worship as a god a very ordinary mortal — and what follows'! 
They live together, and they dine together, and they say “my 
dear ” and “ my love ” as heretofore ; but the man is himself, and 
the woman herself : that dream of love is over as everything else is 
over in life ; as fiowers and fury, and griefs and pleasures are over. 

Very likely the Lady Castlewood had (teased to adore her 
husband herself long before she got olf her knees, or would allow 
her household to discontinue worshipping him. To do him justice, 
my Lord never exacted this subservience : he laughed and joke(l 
and drank his bottle, and swore when he was angry, much too 
familiarly for any one pretending to sublimity; and did his best 
to destroy the ceremonial with which his wife chose to surround 
him. And it required no great conceit on young Esmond’s part 
to see that his own brains were better than his patron’s, who, 
indeed, never assumed any airs of superiority over the lad, or 
over any dependant of his, save when he was displeased, in which 
case he would express his mind in oaths very freely; and who, 
on the contrary, perhaps, spoiled “ Parson Harry,” as he called 
young Esmond, by constantly praising his parts and admiring his 
boyish stock of learning. 

It may seem ungracious in one who has received a hundred 
favours from his patron to speak in any but a reverential manner 
of his elders ; but the present writer has had descendants of his 
own, whom he has brought up with as little as possible of the 
servility at present exacted by parents from children (under which 
mask of duty there often lurks indifterence, contempt, or rebellion) : 
and as he would have his grandsons believe or represent him to 
be not an inch taller than Nature has made him : so, with regard 
to his past acquaintances, he woidd speak without anger, but with 
truth, as far as he knows it, neither extenuating nor setting down 
aught in malice. 

So long, then, as the world moved according to Lord Castle- 
wood’s wishes, he was good-humoured enough; of a temper naturally 
sprightly and easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, 
and charmed to receive the tribute of tlieir laughter. All exercises 
of the body he could perform to pei-fection— shooting at a mark 
and flying, breaking horses, riding at the ring, pitching the quoit. 


70 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

playing at all games with great skill. And not only did he do 
these things Avell, but he thought he did them to perfection ; hence I 

he was often tricked about horses, which he pretended to know | 

better than any jockey ; was made to play at ball and billiards j 
by sharpers who took his money, and came back from London 
woefully poorer each time than he went, as the state of his affairs 
testified when the sudden jiccident came by which his career was 
brought to an end. 

He was fond of the parade of dress, and passed as many 
hours daily at his toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part j 

of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth, and the oiling | 

of his hair, which was curling and brown, and which he did not | 
like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that 
time wore. (We have the liberty of our hair back now, but powder 
and pomatum along with it. When, I wonder, will these monstrous i 
poll-taxes of our age be withdrawn, and men allowed to carry their j 

colours, black, red, or grey, as Nature made them?) And as he | 

liked her to be well dressed, his lady spared no pains in that | 

matter to please him ; indeed, she would dress her head or cut it j 

off if he had bidden her. | 

It was a wonder to young Esmond, serving as page to my Lord 
and Lady, to hear, day after day, to such company as came, the 
same boisterous stories told by my Lord, at which his lady never 
failed to smile or hold down her head, and Doctor Tusher to burst 
out laughing at the proper point, or cry, “ Fie, my Lord, remember 
my cloth ! ” but with such a faint show of resistance, that it only 
provoked my Lord further. Lord Castlewood’s stories rose by 
degrees, and became stronger after the ale at dinner and the bottle 
afterwards ; my Lady always taking flight after the very first glass 
to Church and King, and leaving the gentlemen to drink the rest 
of the toasts by themselves. 

And, as Harry Esmond was her page, he also was called from 
duty at this time. “ My Lord has lived in the army and with 
soldiers,” she would say to the lad, “ amongst whom great licence 
is allowed. You have had a different nurture, and I trust these 
things will change as you grow older ; not that any faidt attaches 
to my Lord, who is one of the best and most religious men in this 
kingdom.” And very likely she believed so. ’Tis strange what a 
man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel. 

And as Esmond has taken truth for his motto, it must be 
owned, even with regard to that other angel, his mistress, that 
slie had a fault of character wdnch flawed her perfections. With 
the other sex perfectly tolerant and kindly, of her own she was 
invariably jealous ; and a proof that she had this vice is, that 


MY LORD’S WIT 


71 

though she would acknowledge a thousand faults that she had 
not, to this which she had she could never be got to own. But 
if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castle- 
wood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my Lord, 
laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her 
foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were 
taken at Castle wood. The housekeeper was old ; my Lady’s own 
waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the smallpox ; the 
housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom 
Lady Castlewood was kind, as her nature made her to everybody 
almost ; but as soon as ever she had to do with a pretty woman, 
she was cold, retiring, and haughty. The country ladies found 
this fault in her ; and though the men all admired her, their wives 
and daughters complained of her coldness and airs, and said that 
Castlewood was pleasanter in Lady Jezebel’s time (as the dowager 
was called) than at present. Some few were of my mistress’s side. 
Old Lady Blenkinsop Jointure, who had been at Court in King 
James the First’s time, always took her side ; and so did old 
Mistress Crookshank, Bishop Crookshank’s daughter, of Hexton, 
who, with some more of their like, pronounced my Lady an angel : 
but the pretty women were not of this mind ; and the opinion of 
the country was that my Lord was tied to his wife’s apron-strings, 
and that she ruled over him. 

The second fight which Harry Esmond had, was at fourteen 
years of age, with Bryan Hawkshaw, Sir John Hawkshaw’s son, 
of Bramblebrook, who, advancing his opinion, that my Lady was 
jealous and henpecked my Lord, put Harry in such a fury, that 
Harry fell on him and with such rage, that the other boy, who 
was two years older and by far bigger than he, had by far the 
worst of the assault, until it was interrupted by Doctor Tusher 
walking out of the dinner-room. 

Bryan Hawkshaw got up bleeding at the nose, having, indeed, 
been surprised, as many a stronger man might have been, by the 
fury of the assault upon him. 

“You little bastard beggar!” he said, “I’ll murder you for 
this ! ” 

And indeed he was big enough. 

“Bastard or not,” said the other, grinding his teeth, “I have 
a couple of swords, and if you like to meet me, as a man, on the 
terrace to-night ” 

And here the Doctor coming up, the colloquy of the young 
champions ended. Very likely, big as he was, Hawkshaw did 
not care to continue a fight with such a ferocious opponent as 
this had been. 


CHAPTER VIII 
AFTER GOOD FORTUNE COMES EVIL 
INCE my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought home the 



custom of inoculation from Turkey (a perilous practice many 


deem it, and only a useless rushing into the jaws of danger), 
I think the severity of the smallpox, that dreadful scourge of the 
world, has somewhat been abated in our part of it ; and remember 
in my time hundreds of the young and beautiful who have been 
carried to the grave, or have only risen from their pillows frightfully 
scarred and disfigured by this malady. Many a sweet face hath 
left its roses on the bed on which this dreadful and withering blight 
has laid them. In my early days, this pestilence would enter a 
village and destroy half its inhabitants : at its approach, it may 
well be imagined not only the beautiful but the strongest were 
alarmed, and those fled who could. One day in the year 1694 (I 
liave good reason to remember it). Dr. Tusher ran into Castlewood 
house, with a face of cx)nsternation, saying that the malady had 
made its appearance at the blacksmith’s house in the village, and 
that one of the maids there was down in the smallpox. 

The blacksmith, besides .his forge and irons for horses, had an 
alehouse for men, which his wife kept, and his company sat on 
benches before the inn door, looking at the smithy while they drank 
their beer. Now, there was a pretty girl at this inn, the landlord’s 
men called Nancy Sieve wright, a bouncing, fresh-looking lass, whose 
face was as red as the hollyhocks over the pales of the garrlen 
behind the inn. At this time Harry Esmond was a lad of sixteen, 
and somehow in his walks and rambles it often happened that he 
fell in with Nancy Sievewright’s bonny face ; if he did not want 
something done at the blacksmith’s he would go and drink ale at 
the “ Three Castles,” or find some pretext for seeing this poor 
Nancy. Poor thing, Harry meant or imagined no harm ; and she, 
no doubt, as little ; but the truth is they were always meeting — in 
the lanes, or by the brook, or at the garden palings, or about 
Castlewood ; it was, “ Lord, Mr. Henry ! ” and “ How do you do, 
Nancy 1 ” many and many a time in the week. ’Tis surprising the 
magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. 


NANCY SIEVEWRIGHT 


73 


I blush as I tliiiik of poor Nancy now, in a red bodice and buxom 
})urple clieeks and a canvas petticoat ; and that I devisc'd s(^hemes, 
and vset traps, and made speeches in my lieart, which I seldom had 
courage to say when in i)reseiice of that humble enchantress, who 
knew nothing beyond milking a cow, and opened her black eyes 
with wonder, when I made one of my fine speeches out of Waller or 
Ovid. Poor Nancy ! from the midst of far-off years thine honest 
country face beams out ; and I remember thy kind voice as if I had 
heard it yesterday. 

When Dr. Tusher brought the new’s that the smallpox was at 
the “Three Castles,” whither a tramper, it was said, had brought 
the malady, Henry Esmond’s first thought was of alarm for poor 
Nancy, and then of shame and disquiet for the Castlewood family, 
lest he might have brought this infection ; for the truth is that 
Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back room for an hour that day, 
where Nancy Sievewright was with a little brother who complained 
of headache, and was lying stupefied and crying, either in a chair 
by the corner of the fire, or in Nancy’s lap, or on mine. 

Little Lady Beatrix screamed out at Dr. Tusher’s news ; and 
my Lord cried out, “ God bless me ! ” He was a brave man, and 
not afraid of death in any shape but this. He was very proud of 
his pink complexion and fair hair — but the idea of death by small- 
pox scared him beyond all other ends. “We will take the children 
and ride away to-morrow to Walcote : ” this was my Lord’s small 
house, inherited from his mother, near to Winchester. 

“That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads,” said 
Doctor Tusher. “ ’Tis awful to think of it beginning at the ale- 
house ; half the people of the village have visited that to-day, or 
the blacksmith’s, which is the same thing. My clerk Nahum lodges 
with them — I can never go into my reading-desk and have that 
fellow so near me. I wonH have that man near me.” 

“ If a parishioner dying in the smallpox sent to you, would you 
not go 1 ” asked my Lady, looking up from her frame of work, with 
her calm blue eyes. 

“ By the Lord, I wouldn’t,” said my Lord. 

“We are not in a Popish country ; and a sick man doth not 
absolutely need absolution and confession,” said the Doctor. “ ’Tis 
true they are a comfort and a help to him when attainable, and to 
be administered with hope of good. But in a case where the life of 
a parish priest in the midst of his flock is highly valuable to them, 
he is not called upon to risk it (and therewith the lives, future pro- 
spects, and temporal, even spiritual Tvelfare of his own family) for 
the sake of a single person, who is not very likely in a condition 
even to understand the religious message whereof the priest is the 


74 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

briiiger — being uneducated, and likewise stupefied or delirious by 
disease. If your Ladyship or his Lordship, iny excellent good 
friend and patron, were to take it ” 

“ God forbid ! ” cried my Lord. 

“ Amen,” continued Dr. T usher. “ Amen to that prayer, my 
very good Lord ! for your sake I would lay my life down ” — and, 
to judge from the alarmed look of the Doctor’s purple face, you 
would have thought that that sacrifice was about to be called for 
instantly. 

To love children, and be gentle with them, was an instinct, 
rather than a merit, in Henry Esmond ; so much so, that he thought 
almost with a sort of shame of his liking for them, and of the soft- 
ness into which it betrayed him ; and on this day the poor fellow 
had not only had his young friend, the milkmaid’s brother, on his 
knee, but had been drawing pictures and telling stories to the little 
Frank Castlewood, who had occupied the same place for an hour 
after dinner, and was never tired of Henry’s tales, and his pictures 
of soldiers and horses. As luck would have it, Beatrix had not on 
that evening taken her usual place, which generally she was glad 
enough to have, upon her tutor’s lap. For Beatrix, from the earliest 
time, was jealous of every caress which was given to her little 
brother Frank. She would fling away even from the maternal 
arms, if she saw Frank had been there before her ; insomuch that 
Lady Esmond was obliged not to show her love for her son in the 
presence of the little girl, and embrace one or the other alone. She 
would turn pale and red with rage if she caught signs of intelligence 
or affection between Frank and his mother ; would sit apart, and 
not speak for a whole night, if she thought the boy had a better 
fruit or a larger cake than hers ; would fling away a riband if he 
had one ; and from the earliest age, sitting up in her little chair by 
the great fireplace opposite to the corner where Lady Castlewood 
commonly sat at her embroidery, would utter infantine sarcasms 
about the favour shown to her brother. These, if spoken in the 
presence of Lord Castlewood, tickled and amused his humour; he 
would pretend to love Frank best, and dandle and kiss him, and 
roar with laughter at Beatrix’s jealousy. But the truth is, my 
Lord did not often witness these scenes, nor very much trouble the 
quiet fireside at which his lady passed many long evenings. My 
Lord was hunting all day when the season admitted ; he frequented 
all the cock-fights and fairs in the country, and would ride twenty 
miles to see a main fought, or two clowns break their heads at a 
cudgelling match ; and he liked better to sit in his parlour drinking 
ale and punch with Jack and Tom, than in his wife’s drawing-room: 
whither, if he came, he brought only too often bloodshot eyes, a 


BEATRIX 


75 


hiccupping voice, and a reeling gait. The nianageinent of the hou.se, 
and the property, the care of the few tenant.s and tlie village poor, 
and the accounts of the estate, were in the hands of his lady and 
her young secretary, Harry Esmond. My Lord took charge of the 
stables, the kennel, and the cellar — and he filled this, and emptied 
it too. 

So it chanced that upon this very day, when poor Harry Esmond 
had had the blacksmith’s son, and the peer’s son, alike upon his 
knee, little Beatrix, who would come to her tutor willingly enough 
with her book and her writing, had refused liim, seeing the place 
occupied by her brother, and, luckily for her, had sat at the farther 
end of the room, away from him, playing with a spaniel dog which 
she had (and for which, by fits and starts, she would take a great 
affection), and talking at Harry Esmond over her shoulder, as she 
pretended to caress the dog, saying that Fido would love her, and 
she would love Fido, and nothing but Fido, all her life. 

When, then, the news was brought that the little boy at the 
“ Three Castles ” was ill with the smallpox, poor Harry Esmond 
felt a shock of alarm, not so much for himself as for his mistress’s 
son, whom he might have brought into peril. Beatrix, who had 
pouted sufficiently (and who, whenever a stranger appeared, began, 
from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention), 
her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon 
Esmond’s knee : for, though the Doctor was very obsequious to 
her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty 
hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated learning 
the Catechism. 

But as she advanced towards Esmond from the corner where 
she had been sulking, he started back and placed the great chair on 
which he was sitting between him and her — saying in the French 
language to Lady Castlewood, with whom the young lad had read 
much, and whom he had perfected in this tongue — “ Madam, the 
child must not approach me ; I must tell you that I was at the 
blacksmith’s to-day, and had his little boy upon my lap.” 

“ Where you took my son afterwards,” Lady Castlewood said, 
very angry, and turning red. “I thank you, sir, for giving him 
such company. Beatrix,” she said in English, “I forbid you to 
touch Mr. Esmond. Come away, child — come to your room. 
Come to your room — I wish your Reverence good-night — and you, 
sir, had you not better go back to your friends at the alehouse ? ” 
Her eyes, ordinarily so kind, darted flashes of anger as she spoke ; 
and she tossed up her head (which hung down commonly) with the 
mien of a princess. 

“ Heyday ! ” says my Lord, who was standing by the fireplace — 


76 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMONJ) 

iiideeil he was in the ])o.sition to whieh he generally ("line hy that 
hour of the evening — “ Heyday ! Rachel, what are you in a 
passion about 'I Ladies oug.ht never to be in a passion — ought 
they, Doctor Tusher? — though it does good to see Rachel in a 
passion. Damme, Lady Castlewood, you look dev’lish handsome 
in a passion.” 

“ It is, my Lord, because Mr. Henry Esmond, having nothing 
to do with his time here, and not having a taste for our company, 
has been to the alehouse, where he has some friends.” 

My Lord burst out, with a laugh and an oath : “You young 

slyboots, you’ve been at Nancy Sievewright. D the young 

hypocrite, who’d have thought it in him? I say, Tusher, he’s 
been after ” 

“ Enough, my Lord,” said my Lady ; “ don’t insult me with 
this talk.” 

“Upon my word,” said poor Harry, ready to cry with shame 
and mortification, “ the honour of that young person is perfectly 
unstained for me.” 

“Oh, of course, of course,” says my Lord, more and more laugh- 
ing and tipsy. “Upon his honour., Doctor — Nancy Sieve ” 

“ Take Mistress Beatrix to bed,” my Lady cried at this moment 
to Mrs. Tucker her woman, who came in with her Ladyshi23’s tea. 
“ Put her into my room — no, into yours,” she added quickly. “ Go, 
my child : go, I say : not a word ! ” And Beatrix, quite surprised 
at so sudden a tone of authority from one who was seldom accus- 
tomed to raise her voice, went out of the room Avith a scared 
countenance, and waited even to burst out a-crying until she got 
to the door with Mrs. Tucker. 

For once her mother took little heed of her sobbing, and con- 
tinued to speak eagerly — “My Lord,” she said, “ this young man — 
your dependant —told me just now in French — he was ashamed to 
to speak in his own language — that he had been at the alehouse 
all day, where he has had that little wretch who is now ill of the 
smallpox on his knee. And he comes home reeking from that 
place — yes, reeking from it — and takes my boy into his lap without 
shame, and sits down by me, yes, by me. He may have killed 
Frank for what I know — killed our child. Why was he brought 
in to disgrace our house ? Why is he here ? Let him go — let him 
go, I say, to-night, and pollute the place no more.” 

She had never once uttered a syllable of unkindness to Harry 
Esmond ; and her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood 
for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice 
of sucli a stab from such a hand. He turned quite white from red, 
which he liad been. 


A WOMAN’S WAY 


77 


“I cannot help my birth, madam,” he said, “nor my other 
misfortune. And as for your boy, if — if my coming nigli to him 
pollutes him now, it was not so always. Good-night, my Loi-d. 
Heaven bless you and yours for your goodness to me. I have tired 
her Ladyship’s kindness out, and I will go ; ” and, sinking down on 
his knee, Harry Esmond took the rough hand of his benefactor 
and kissed it. 

“ He wants to go to the alehouse — let him go,” cried my Lady. 

“ I’m d d if he shall,” said my Lord. “ I didn’t think you 

could be so d d ungrateful, Rachel.” 

Her reply was to burst into a flood of tears, and to quit the 
room with a rapid glance at Harry Esmond, — as my Lord, not 
heeding them, and still in great good-humour, raised up his young 
client from his kneeling posture (for a thousand kindnesses had 

caused the lad to revere my Lord as a father), and put his broad 

hand on Harry Esmond’s shoulder. 

“ She was always so,” my Lord said ; “ the very notion of a 
woman drives her mad. I took to liquor on that very account, by 
Jove, for no other reason than that; for she can’t be jealous of a 

beer-barrel or a bottle of rum, can she. Doctor'? D' it, look 

at the maids — ^just look at the maids in the house” (my Lord 
pronounced all the words together — just-look-at-the-maze-in-the- 
house : jever-see-such-maze ?). “You wouldn’t take a wife out of 
Castlewood now, would you. Doctor'?” and my Lord burst out 
laughing. 

The Doctor, who had been looking at my Lord Castlewood from 
under his eyelids, said, “ But joking apart, and, my Lord, as a 
divine, I cannot treat the subject in a jocular light, nor, as a pastor 
of this congregation, look with anything but sorrow at the idea of 
so very young a sheep going astray.” 

“Sir,” said young Esmond, bursting out indignantly, “she told 
me that you yourself were a horrid old man, and had offered to kiss 
her in the dairy.” 

“ For shame, Henry,” cried Doctor Tusher, turning as red as 
a turkey-cock, while my Lord continued to roar with laughter. 
“ If you listen to the falsehoods of an abandoned girl ” 

“ She is as honest as any woman in England, and as pure 
for me,” cried out Henry, “ and as kind, and as good. For shame 
on you to malign her ! ” 

“ Far be it from me do so,” cried the Doctor. “ Heaven grant 
I may be mistaken in the girl, and in you, sir, who have a truly 
precocious genius; but that is not the point at issue at present. 
It api)ears that the smallpox broke out in the little boy at tin* 

‘ Tliree Castles ’ ; that it was on him when you visited the alehouse, 


78 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


for your own reasons; and that you sat with the child for some 
time, and immediately afterwards with my young Lord.” The 
Doctor raised his voice as he spoke, and looked towards my Lady, 
who had now come back, looking very j)ale, with a handkerchief 
in her hand. 

“ This is all very true, sir,” said Lady Esmond, looking at the 
young man. 

“ ’Tis to be feared that he may have brought the infection with 
him.” 

“ From the alehouse — yes,” said my Lady. 

“ D it, I forgot when I collared you, boy,” cried my Lord, 

stepping back. “ Keep off, Harry my boy ; there’s no good in 
running into the wolfs jaws, you know.” 

My Lady looked at him with some surprise, and instantly 
advancing to Henry Esmond, took his hand. “ I beg your pardon, 
Henry,” she said ; “I spoke very unkindly. I have no right to 
interfere with you — with your ” 

My Lord broke out into an oath. “ Can’t you leave the boy 
alone, my Lady % ” She looked a little red, and faintly pressed the 
lad’s hand as she dropped it. 

“ There is no use, my Lord,” she said ; “ Frank was on his knee 
as he was making pictures, and was running constantly from Henry 
to me. The evil is done, if any.” 

“Not with me, damme,” cried my Lord. “I’ve been smoking,” 
— and he lighted his pipe again with a coal — “and it keeps off 
infection ; and as the disease is in the village — plague take it ! — 
I would have you leave it. We’ll go to-morrow to Walcote, my 
Lady.” 

“ I have no fear,” said my Lady ; “I may have had it as an 
infant : it broke out in our house then ; and when four of my sisters 
had it at home, two years before our marriage, I escaped it, and 
two of my dear sisters died.” 

“ I won’t run the risk,” said my Lord ; “ I’m as bold as any 
man, but I’ll not bear that.” 

“ Take Beatrix with you and go,” said my Lady. “ For us 
the mischief is done ; and Tucker can wait upon us, who has liad 
the disease.” 

“ You take care to choose ’em ugly enough,” said my Lord, at 
which her Ladyship hung down her head and looked foolish : and 
my Lord, calling away Tusher, bade him come to the oak parlour 
and have a pipe. The Doctor made a low bow to her Ladyship 
(of which salaams he was profuse), and walked off on his creaking 
square-toes after his patron. 

When the lady and the young man were alone, there was a 


SMALLPOX AT CASTLEWOOD 


7.9 

silence of some moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking 
rather vacantly at the dying embers, whilst her Ladyship busied 
herself with the tambour-frame and needles. 

“I am sorry,” she said, after a pause, in a hard, dry voice, — 
“ I repeat I am sorry that I showed myself so ungrateful for the 
safety of my son. It was not at all my wish that you should leave 
us, I am sure, unless you found pleasure elsewhere. But you must 
perceive, Mr. Esmond, tliat at your age, and with your tastes, it 
is impossible that you can continue to stay upon the intimate 
footing in which you have been in this family. You have wished 
to go to the University, and I think ’tis quite as well that you 
should be sent thither. I did not press this matter, thinking you 
a child, as you are, indeed, in years — quite a child ; and I should 
never have thought of treating you otherwise until — until these 
circumstances came to light. And I shall beg my Lord to despatch 
you as quick as possible : and will go on with Frank’s learning as 
well as I can (I owe my father thanks for a little grounding, and 
you, I’m sure, for much that you have taught me), — and — and I 
wish you a good-night, Mr. Esmond.” 

And with this she dropped a stately curtsey, and, taking her 
candle, went away through the tapestry door, which led to her 
apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after 
her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone ; and then 
her image w^as impressed upon him, and remained for ever fixed 
upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up 
her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining golden 
hair. He went to his own room, and to bed, where he tried to 
read, as his custom was ; but he never knew what he was reading 
until afterwards he remembered the appearance of the letters of 
the book (it was in Montaigne’s Essays), and the events of the day 
passed before him — that is, of the last hour of the day ; for as for 
the morning, and the poor milkmaid yonder, he never so much as 
once thought. And he could not get to sleep until daylight, and 
woke with a violent headache, and quite unrefreshed. 

He had brought the contagion with him from the “Three 
Castles ” sure enough, and was presently laid up with the small- 
pox, which spared the hall no more than it did the cottage. 


CHAPTER IX 


I HAVE THE SMALLPOX, AND PREPARE TO LEAVE 
CASTLEIVOOD 

W HEN Harry Esmond passed through the crisis of that 
malady, and returned to health again, he found that 
little Frank Esmond had also suffered and rallied after 
the disease, and the lady his mother was down with it, with a 
couple more of the household. “ It was a Providence, for which 
we all ought to be thankful,” Doctor Tusher said, “ that my Lady 
and her son were spared, while Death carried off the poor domestics 
of the house ; ” and rebuked Harry for asking, in his simple way. 
For which we ought to be thankful — that the servants were killed, 
or the gentlefolks were saved? Nor could young Esmond agree 
in the Doctor’s vehement protestations to my Lady, when he visited 
her during her convalescence, that the malady had not in the least 
impaired her charms, and had not been churl enough to injui’e the 
fair features of the Viscountess of Castle wood ; whereas, in spite of 
these fine speeches, Harry thought that her Ladyship’s beauty was 
very much injured by the smallpox. When the marks of the 
disease cleared away, they did not, it is true, leave furrows or scars 
on her face (except one, perhaps, on her forehead over her left eye- 
brow) ; but the delicacy of her rosy colour and complexion was 
gone : her eyes had lost their brilliancy, her hair fell, and her face 
looked older. It was as if a coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate 
tints of that sweet picture, and brought it, as one has seen un- 
skilful painting-cleaners do, to the dead colour. Also, it must be 
owned, that for a year or two after the malady, her Ladyship’s nose 
was swollen and redder. 

There would be no need to mention these trivialities, but that 
they actually influenced many lives, as trifles will in the world, where 
a gnat often plays a greater part than an elephant, and a molehill, 
as we know in King William’s case, can upset an empire. When 
Tusher in his courtly way (at which Harry Esmond always chafed 
and spoke scornfully) vowed and protested that my Lady’s face 
was none the worse — the lad broke out and said, “ It is worse : 
and my mistress is not near so handsome as she was ; ” on which 


81 


QUOYE COLOR DECENS? 

}K)or Lady Castlewood gave a rueful smile, and a look into a little 
\ euiee glass she liad, which shoAved her, I suppose, that what the 
stupid boy said was only too true, for she turned away from the 
glass, and her eyes filled AA'ith tears. 

The sight of these in Esmond’s heart always created a sort 
of rage of pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he 
loved best, the young blunderer sank down on his knees, and 
besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an 
idiot, that he Avas a brute to make such a speech, he who had 
caused her malady ; and Doctor Tusher told him that a bear he 
Avas indeed, and a bear he would remain, at Avhich speech poor 
young Esmond Avas so dumb-stricken that he did not even groAvl. 

“ He is my bear, and I will not have him baited. Doctor,” my 
Lady said, patting her hand kindly on the boy’s, head, as he was 
still kneeling at her feet. “ How your hair has come off ! And 
mine, too,” she added with another sigh. 

“ It is not for myself that I cared,” my Lady said to Harry, 
Avhen the parson had taken his leave ; “ but am I very much 
changed^ Alas ! I fear ’tis too true.” 

“ Madam, you have the dearest, and kindest, and sweetest face 
in the world, I think,” the lad said ; and indeed he thought and 
thinks so. 

“Will my Lord think so when he comes back?” the lady 
asked with a sigh, and another look at her Venice glass. “ Sup- 
pose he should think as you do, sir, that I am hideous — yes, you 
said hideous — he Avill cease to care for me. ’Tis all men care for 
in women, our little beauty. Why did he select me from among 
my sisters ? ’Twas only for that. W e reign but for a day or two : 
and be sure that Vashti knew Esther was coming.” 

“ Madam,” said Mr. Esmond, “ Ahasuerus was the Grand Turk, 
and to change was the manner of his country, and according to 
his law.” 

“ You are all Grand Turks for that matter,” said my Lady, 
“or would be if you could. Come, Frank, come, my child. You 
are Avell, praised be Heaven. Your locks are not thinned by this 
dreadful smallpox : nor your poor face scarred- — is it, my angel ? ” 

Frank began to shout and whimpe]’ at the idea of such a 
misfortune. From the very earliest time the young Lord had 
been taught to admire his beauty by his mother : and esteemed it 
as highly as any reigning toast valued hers. 

One day, as he himself was recoA’-ering from liis fever and illness, 
a pang of something like shame shot across young Esmond’s breast, 
as lie remembered that he had never once during his illness given 
a thought to the poor girl at the smithy, Avhose red cheeks but 


82 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

a month ago he had been so eager to see. Poor Nancy ! her cheeks 
had shai’cd the fate of roses, and were withered now. She had 
taken the illness on the same day with Esmond — she and her 
brother were both dead of the smallpox, and buried under tlie 
Castlewood yew-trees. There was no bright face looking now 
from the garden, or to cheer the old smith at his lonely fireside. 
Esmond would have liked to have kissed her in her shroud (like 
the lass in Mr. Prior’s pretty poem) ; but she rested many a foot 
below the ground, when Esmond after his malady first trod on it. ! 

Doctor Tusher brought the news of this calamity, about which ] 
Harry Esmond longed to ask, but did not like. He said almost | 
the whole village had been stricken with the pestilence ; seventeen 
persons were dead of it, among them mentioning the names of I 
poor Nancy and her little brother. He did not fail to say how ! 
thankful we survivors ought to be. It being this man’s business I 
to flatter and make sermons, it must be owned he was most indus- ! 
trious in it, and was doing the one or the other all day. 

And so Nancy was gone ; and Harry Esmond blushed that ' 
he had not a single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in 
Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads 
mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed 
the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter 
of Venus, though Sievewright’s wife was an ugly shrew^, as he 
remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, 
in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. 
These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive ; and 
are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to 
his last day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed 
his pretty lass ; not without shame to remember how bad the 
verses were, and how good he thought them ; how false the grief, 
and yet how he was rather proud of it. ’Tis an error, surely, to 
talk of the simplicity of youth. I think no persons are more 
hypocritical, and have a more affected behaviour to one another, 
than the young. They deceive themselves and each other with 
artifices that do not impose upon men of the world ; and so we 
get to understand truth better, and grow simpler as we grow older. 

Wlien my Lady heard of the fate which had befallen poor 
Nancy, she said nothing so long as Tusher was by, but when he 
was gone, she took Harry Esmond’s hand and said — 

“ Harry, I beg your pardon for those cruel words I used on 
the night you were taken ill. I am shocked at the fate of the 
poor creature, and am sure that nothing had happened of that with 
which, in my anger, I charged you. And the very first day we 
go out, you must take me to tlie blacksmith, and we must see 


83 


MY LORD RETURNS 

if there is anything I can do to console the poor old man. Poor 
man ! to lose both his children ! What should I do without 
mine 1 ” 

And this was, indeed, the very first walk which my Lady 
took, leaning on Esmond’s arm, after her illness. But her visit 
brought no consolation to the old father; and he showed no soft- 
ness, or desire to speak. “ The Lord gave and took away,” he 
said ; and he knew what His servant’s duty was. He wanted for 
nothing — less now than ever before, as there were fewer mouths 
to feed. He wished her Ladyship and Master Esmond good- 
morning — he had grown tall in his illness, and was but very little 
marked ; and with this, and a surly bow, he went in from the 
smithy to the house, leaving my Lady, somewhat silenced and 
shamefaced, at the door. He had a handsome stone put up for 
his two children, which may be seen in Castlewood churchyard to 
this very day ; and before a year was out his own name was upon 
the stone. In the presence of Death, that sovereign ruler, a 
woman’s coquetry is scared ; and her jealousy will hardly pass the 
boundaries of that grim kingdom. ’Tis entirely of the earth that 
passion, and expires in the cold blue air beyond our sphere. 

At length, when the danger was quite over, it was announced 
that my Lord and his daughter would return. Esmond well re- 
membered the day. The lady his mistress was in a flurry of fear : 
before my Lord came, she went into her room, and returned from 
it with reddened cheeks. Her fate was about to be decided. Her 
beauty was gone — was her reign, too, over ? A minute would say. 
My Lord came riding over the bridge — he could be seen from the 
great window, clad in scarlet, and mounted on his grey hackney — 
his little daughter ambled by him in a bright riding-dress of blue, 
on a shining chestnut horse. My Lady leaned against the great 
mantelpiece, looking on, with one hand on her heart — she seemed 
only the more pale for those red marks on either cheek. She put 
her handkerchief to her eyes, and withdrew it, laughing hysterically 
— the cloth was quite red with the rouge when she took it away. 
She ran to her room again, and came back with pale cheeks and red 
eyes — her son in her hand^ — just as my Lord entered, accompanied 
by young Esmond, who had gone out to meet his protector, and to 
hold his stirrup as he descended from horseback. 

“ What, Harry, boy ! ” my Lord said good-naturedly, “ you 
look as gaunt as a greyhound. The smallpox hasn’t improved 
your beauty, and your side of the house hadn’t never too much of 
it — ho, ho ! ” 

And he laughed, and sprang to the ground with no small agility, 
looking handsome and red, with a jolly face and brown hair, like a 


84 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Beefeater; Esmond kneeling again, as soon as liis j)atron had 
descended, performed his homage, and then went to greet the little 
Beatrix, and help her from her horse. 

“Fie! how yellow you look!” she said; “and there are one, 
two, red holes in your face ; ” which, indeed, was very true ; Harry 
Esmond’s harsh countenance hearing, as long as it continued to be 
a human face, the marks of the disease. 

My Lord laughed again, in high good-humour. 

“D it ! ” said he, with one of his usual oaths, “the little 

slut sees everything. She saw the Dowager’s paint t’other day, 
and asked her why she wore that red stuff — didn’t you, Trix 'I and 
the Tower ; and St. James’s ; and the play ; and the Prince George, 
and the Princess Anne — didn’t you, TrixD’ 

“ They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy,” the child said. 

Papa roared with laughing. 

“ Brandy ! ” he said. “ And how do you know. Miss Pert 1 ” 

“ Because your Lordship smells of it after supper, when I em- 
brace you before I go to bed,” said the young lady, who, indeed, 
was as pert as her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy 
as eyes ever gazed on. 

“ And now for my Lady,” said my Lord, going up the stairs, and 
passing under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing- 
room door. Esmond remembered that noble figure, handsomely 
arrayed in scarlet. Within the last few months he himself had 
grown from a boy to be a man, and with his figure his thoughts had 
shot up and grown manly. 

My Lady’s countenance, of which Harry Esmond was accus- 
tomed to watch the changes, and with a solicitous affection to note 
and interpret the signs of gladness or care, wore a sad and depressed 
look for many weeks after her Lord’s return : during which it 
seemed as if, by caresses and entreaties, she strove to win him 
back from some ill-humour he had, and which he did not choose to 
throw off. In her eagerness to please him she practised a hundred 
of those arts which had formerly charmed him, but which seemed 
now to have lost their potency. Her songs did not amuse him ; 
and she hushed them and the children when in his presence. My 
Lord sat silent at his dinner, drinking greatly, his lady opposite to 
him, looking furtively at his face, though also speechless. Her 
silence annoyed him as much as her speech ; and he would peevishly, 
and with an oath, ask her why she held her tongue and looked so 
glum ; or he would roughly check her when speaking, and bid her 
not talk nonsense. It seemed as if, since his return, nothing she 
coidd d(j or say could please him. 

When a master and mistress are at strife in a house, the sub- 


THE COMMON LOT 

ordinates in the family take tlie one side or the other. Harry 
Esmond stood in so great fear of my Lord, that lie would run a 
league barefoot to do a message for him : l)ut his attachment for 
liady Esmond was such a passion of grateful regard, that to spare 
her a grief, or to do her a service, he would have given his life 
daily : and it was by the very depth and intensity of this regard 
that he began to divine how unhappy his adored lady’s life was, and 
that a secret care (for she never spoke of her anxieties) was weighing 
upon her. 

Gan any one, who has passed through the world and watched 
the nature of men and women there, doubt what had befallen her? 
I have seen, to be sure, some people carry down with them into old 
age the actual bloom of their youthful love, and I know that Mr. 
Thomas Parr lived to be a hundred and sixty years old. But, for 
all that, threescore and ten is the age of men, and few get beyond 
it ; and ’tis certain that a man who marries for mere beaux yeux, as 
my Lord did, considers this jiart of the contract at an end when 
the woman ceases to fulfil hers, and his love does not survive 
her beauty. I know ’tis often otherwise, I say ; and can think (as 
most men in their own experience may) of many a house, where, 
lighted in early years, the sainted lamp of love hath never been 
extinguished ; but so there is Mr. Parr, and so there is the great 
giant at the fair that is eight feet high — exceptions to men — and 
that poor lamp whereof I speak, that lights at first the nuptial 
chamber, is extinguished by a hundred winds and draughts down the 
chimney, or sputters out for want of feeding. And then — and then 
it is Chloe, in the dark, stark awake, and Strephon snoring un- 
heeding ; or vice versa, ’tis poor Strephon that has married a heart- 
less jilt, and awoke out of that absurd vision of conjugal felicity, 
which was to last for ever, and is over like any other dream. One 
and other has made his bed, and so must lie in it, until that final 
day when life ends, and they sleep separate. 

About this time young Esmond, who had a knack of stringing 
verses, turned some of Ovid’s Epistles into rhymes, and brought 
them to his lady for her delectation. Those which treated of for- 
saken women touched her immensely, Harry remarked ; and when 
(Enone called after Paris, and Medea bade Jason come back again, 
the Lady of Castlewood sighed, and said she thought that part of 
the verses was the most pleasing. Indeed, she would have chopped 
up the Dean, her old father, in order to bring her husband back 
again. But lier beautiful Jason was gone, as beautiful Jasons will 
go, and the poor enchantress had never a spell to keep him. 

My Lord was only sulky as long as his wife’s anxious face or be- 
haviour seemed to upbraid him. When she had got to master these. 


86 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and to show an outwardly cheerful countenance and behaviour, 
her husband’s good-humour returned partially, and lie swore and 
stormed no longer at dinner, but laughed sometimes, and yawned 
unrestrainedly; absenting himself often from home, inviting more 
company thither, passing the greater part of his days in the hunting- 
field, or over the bottle as before ; but with this difference, that the 
poor wife could no longer see now, as she had done formerly, the 
light of love kindled in his eyes. He was with her, but that flame 
was out : and that once welcome beacon no more shone there. 

What were this lady’s feelings when forced to admit the truth 
whereof her foreboding glass had given her only too true warning, 
that with her beauty her reign had ended, and the days of her love 
were over ? What does a seaman do in a storm if mast and rudder 
are carried away"? He ships a jury mast, and steers as he best can 
with an oar. What happens if your roof falls in a tempest ? After 
the first stun of the calamity the sufferer starts up, gropes around 
to see that the children are safe, and puts them under a shed out of 
the rain. If the palace burns down, you take shelter in the barn. 
What man’s life is not overtaken by one or more of these tornadoes 
that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as 
best we may 'I 

When Lady Castlewood found that her great ship had gone 
down, she began as best she might, after she had rallied from the 
effects of the loss, to put out small ventures of happiness ; and hope 
for little gains and returns, as a merchant on ’Change, indocilis 
pauperiem pati, having lost his thousands, embarks a few guineas 
upon the next ship. She laid out her all upon her children, in- 
dulging them beyond all measure, as was inevitable with one of her 
kindness of disposition ; giving all her thoughts to their welfare — 
learning, that she might teach them ; and improving her own many 
natural gifts and feminine accomplishments, that she might impart 
them to her young ones. To be doing good for some one else, is the 
life of most good women. They are exuberant of kindness, as it 
were, and must impart it to some one. She made herself a good 
scholar of French, Italian, and Latin, having been grounded in these 
by her father in her youth ; hiding these gifts from her husband out 
of fear, perhaps, that they should offend him, for my Lord was no 
bookman — pish’d and psha’d at the notion of learned ladies, and 
would have been angry that his wife could construe out of a Latin 
book of which he could scarce understand two words. Young 
Esmond was usher, or house tutor, under her or over her, as it 
might happen. During my Lord’s many absences, these school-days 
would go on uninterruptedly : the mother and daughter learning 
with surprising quickness ; the latter by fits and starts only, and 


PATHEMATA MATHEMATA 87 

us suited her wayward luiiiiour. As for the little lord, it must he 
owned that he took after his father in the matter of learning — liked 
marbles and play, and the great horse and the little one which his 
father brought him, and on which he took him out a-hunting, a 
great deal better than Corderius and Lily ; marshalled the village 
boys, and had a little court of them, already flogging them, and 
domineering over them with a fine imperious spirit, that made his 
father laugh when he beheld it, and his mother fondly warn him. 
The cook had a son, the woodman had two, the big lad at the 
porter’s lodge took his cufis and his orders. Doctor Tusher said he 
was a young nobleman ot gallant spirit ; and Harry Esmond, who 
was his tutor, and ten years his little Lordship’s senior, had hard 
work sometimes to keep his own temper, and hold his authority 
over his rebellious little chief and kinsman. 

In a couple of years after that calamity had befallen which had 
robbed Lady Castlewood of a little— a very little — of her beauty, 
and of her careless husband’s heart (if the truth must be told, my 
Lady had found not only that her reign was over, but that her 
successor was appointed, a Princess of a noble house in Drury Lane 
somewhere, who was installed and visited by my Lord at the town 
eight miles off — pudet hcec approbria dicere nobis ) — a great change 
had taken place in her mind, which, by struggles only known to 
herself, at least never mentioned to any one, and unsuspected by the 
person who caused the pain she endured — had been schooled into 
such a condition as she could not very likely have imagined possible 
a score of months since, before her misfortunes had begun. 

She had oldened in that time as people do who suffer silently 
great mental pain ; and learned much that she had never suspected 
before. She was taught by that bitter teacher Misfortune. A child 
the mother of other children, but two years back her lord was a 
god to her ; his words her law ; his smile her sunshine ; his lazy 
commonplaces listened to eagerly, as if they were words of wisdom 
— all his wishes and freaks obeyed with a servile devotion. She 
had been my Lord’s chief slave and blind worshipper. Some women 
bear further than this, and submit not only to neglect but to un- 
faithfulness too — but here this lady’s allegiance had failed her. Her 
spirit rebelled, and disowned any more obedience. First she had to 
bear in secret the passion of losing the adored object ; then to get 
a further initiation, and to find this worshipped being was but a 
clumsy idol : then to admit the silent truth, that it was she was 
superior, and not the monarch her master : that she had thoughts 
which his brains could never master, and was the better of the 
two ; quite separate from my Lord although tied to him, and bound, 
as almost all people (save a very happy few), to work all her life 


88 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


alone. My Lord sat in his elniir, langliing his laugh, cracking liis 
joke, his face flusliing with wine — iny Lady in her place over against 
him — he never suspecting that his superior was there, in the calm 
resigned lady, cold of manner, with downcast eyes. When he was 
merry in his cups, he would make jokes about her coldness, and 
“D — — it, now my Lady is gone, we will have t’other bottle,” he 
would say. He was frank enough in telling his thoughts, sucli as 
they were. There was little mystery about my Lord’s words or 
actions. His Fair Rosamond did not live in a Labyrinth, like the 
lady of Mr. Addison’s opera, but paraded with painted cheeks and 
a tipsy retinue in the country town. Had she a mind to be re- 
venged, Lady Castlewood could have found the way to her rival’s 
house easily enough ; and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, 
would have been routed off the ground by the enemy with a volley 
of Billingsgate, which the fair person always kept by her. 

Meanwhile, it has been said, that for Harry Esmond his bene- 
factress’ sweet face had lost none of its charms. It had always the 
kindest of looks and smiles for him — smiles, not so gay and artless 
perhaps as those which Lady Castlewood had formerly Avorn, when, 
a child herself, playing with her children, her husband’s pleasure 
and authority Avere all she thought of ; but out of her griefs and 
cares, as will happen I think when these trials fall upon a kindly 
heart, and are not too unbearable, grew up a number of thoughts 
and excellences which had never come into existence, had not her 
sorroAV and misfortunes engendered them. Sure, occasion is the 
father of most that is good in us. As you have seen the aAvk- 
ward fingers and clumsy tools of a prisoner cut and fashion the 
most delicate little pieces of carved work; or achieve the most 
prodigious underground labours, and cut through Avails of masonry, 
and saw iron bars and fetters; ’tis misfortune that aAvakens in- 
genuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities 
had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave tliem 
a being. 

“ ’Twas after Jason left her, no doubt,” Lady Castlewood once 
said with one of her smiles to young Esmond (who was reading to 
her a version of certain lines out of Euripides), “ that Medea 
became a learned woman and a great enchantress.” 

“And she could conjure the stars out of heaven,” the young 
tutor added, “ but she could not bring Jason back again.” 

“ What do you mean I ” asked my Lady, very angry. 

“ Indeed I mean nothing,” said the other, “ save what I’A^e 
read in books. What should I know about such matters ? I have 
seen no Avoman save you and little Beatrix, and the parson’s Avife 
and my late mistress, and your Ladyship’s AA^oman here.” 


SCHOOL-DAYS 


89 


“ The men who wrote your books,” says my Lady, “ your 
Horaces, and Ovids, and Virgils, as far as 1 know of them, all 
thought ill of us, as all the heroes they wrote about used us basely. 
We were bred to be slaves always ; and even of our own times, as 
you are still the only lawgivers, I think our sermons seem to say 
that the best woman is she who bears her master’s chains most 
gracefully. ’Tis a pity there are no nunneries permitted by our 
Church : Beatrix and I would fly to one, and end our days in 
peace there away from you.” 

“ And is there no slavery in a convent ? ” says Esmond. 

“ At least if women are slaves there, no one sees them,” 
answered the lady. “They don’t work in street gangs with the 
l)ublic to jeer them : and if they suffer, suffer in private. Here 
conies my Lord home from hunting. Take away the books. My 
Lord does not love to see them. Lessons are over for to-day, Mr. 
Tutor.” And with a curtsey and a smile she would end this sort 
of colloquy. 

Indeed “Mr. Tutor,” as my Lady called Esmond, had now 
business enough on his hands in Castlewood House. He had three 
pupils, his lady and her two children, at whose lessons she would 
always be present ; besides writing my Lord’s letters, and arranging 
his accompts for him — when these could be got from Esmond’s 
indolent patron. 

Of the pupils the two young people were but lazy scholars, and 
as my Lady would admit no discipline such as was then in use, my 
Lord’s son only learned what he liked, which was but little, and 
never to his life’s end could be got to construe more than six lines 
of Virgil. Mistress Beatrix chattered French prettily, from a very 
early age ; and sang sweetly, but this was from her mother’s teach- 
ing— not Harry Esmond’s, who could scarce distinguish between 
“ Green Sleeves ” and “ Lillibullero ” ; although he had no greater 
delight in life than to hear the ladies sing. He sees them now 
(will he ever forget theml) as they used to sit together of the 
summer evenings — the two golden heads over the page — the 
child’s little hand and the mother’s beating the time, with tlieir 
voices rising and falling in unison. 

But if the children were careless, ’twas a wonder how eagerly 
the mother learnt from her young tutor — and taught him too. 
The happiest instinctive faculty was this lady’s — a faculty for 
discerning latent beauties and hidden graces of books, especially 
books of poetry, as in a walk she would sj^y out field-flowers and 
make posies of them, such as no other hand could. 81ie was a 
critic, not by reason but by feeling : the sweetest commentatoi 
of those books they read together; and the happiest hours of 


90 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


young Esmond’s life, perhaps, were those passed in the company 
of this kind mistress and her children. 

These happy days were to end soon, however ; and it was by 
the Lady Castle wood’s own decree that they were brought to a 
conclusion. It happened about Christmas-time, Harry Esmond 
being now past sixteen years of age, that his old comrade, adversary, 
and friend, Tom Tusher, returned from his school in London, a 
fair, well-grown, and sturdy lad, who was about to enter college, 
with an exhibition from his school, and a prospect of after pro- 
motion in the Church. Tom Tusher’s talk was of nothing but 
Cambridge now ; and the boys, who were good friends, examined 
each other eagerly about their progress in books. Tom had learned 
some Creek and Hebrew, besides Latin, in which he was pretty 
well skilled, and also had given himself to mathematical studies 
under his father’s guidance, who was a proficient in those sciences, 
of which Esmond knew nothing ; nor could he write Latin so well 
as Tom, though he could talk it better, having been taught by 
his dear friend the Jesuit Father, for whose memory the lad ever 
retained the warmest affection, reading his books, keeping his 
swords clean in the little crypt where the Father had shown them 
to Esmond on the night of his visit ; and often of a night sitting 
in the chaplain’s room, which he inliabited, over his books, his 
verses, and rubbish, with which the lad occupied himself, he would 
look up at the window, thinking he wished it might open and let 
in the good Father. He had come and passed away like a dream ; 
but for the swords and books Harry might almost think the Father 
was an imagination of his mind — and for two letters which had 
come to liim, one from abroad full of advice and affection, another 
soon after he had been confirmexl by the Bishop of Hexton, in 
which Father Holt deplored his falling away. But Harry Esmond 
felt so confident now of his being in the right, and of his own 
powers as a casuist, that he thought he was able to face the Father 
himself in argument, and possibly convert him. j 

To work upon the faith of her young pupil, Esmond’s kind j 
mistress sent to the library of her father the Dean, who had been i 
distinguished in the disputes of the late King’s reign ; and, an old | 
soldier now, had hung up his weapons of controversy. These he j 
took down from his shelves willingly for young Esmond, whom he I 
benefited by his own personal advice and instruction. It did not 
require much persuasion to induce the boy to worship with his j 
beloved mistress. And the good old nonjuring Dean flattered him- j 
self with a conversion which, in truth, was owing to a much gentler i 
and fairer persuader. 

Under her Ladyship’s kind eyes (my Lord’s being sealed in sleep 


MY MOTHEli CHURCH 


.91 

pretty generally) Esmond read many volumes of the works of the 
tainous British divines of the last age, and was familiar with Wake 
and Sherlock, with Stillingfleet and Patrick. His mistress never 
tired to listen or to read, to pursue the texts with fond comments, 
to urge those points which her fancy dwelt on most, or her reason 
deemed most important. Since the death of her father the Dean, 
this lady had admitted a certain latitude of theological reading which 
her orthodox father would never have allowed ; his favourite writers 
appealing more to reason and antiquity than to the passions or 
imaginations of their readers, so that the works of Bishop Taylor, 
nay, those of Mr. Baxter and Mr. Law, have in reality found more 
favour with my Lady Castlewood than the severer volumes of our 
great English schoolmen. 

In later life, at the University, Esmond reopened the contro- 
versy, and pursued it in a very different manner, when his patrons 
had determined for him that he was to embrace the ecclesiastical 
life. But though his mistress’ heart was in this calling, his own 
never was much. After that first fervour of simple devotion, which 
his beloved Jesuit priest had inspired in him, speculative theology 
took but little hold upon the young man’s mind. When his early 
credulity was disturbed, and his saints and virgins taken out of his 
worship, to rank little higher than the divinities of Olympus, his 
belief became acquiescence rather than ardour ; and he made his 
mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another man does to 
wear a breastplate and jackboots, or to mount a merchant’s desk, 
for a livelihood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than from 
choice. There were scores of such men in Mr. Esmond’s time at 
the universities, who were going to the Cliurch with no better 
calling than his. 

When Thomas Tusher was gone, a feeling of no small depression 
and disquiet fell upon young Esmond, of which, though he did not 
complain, his kind mistress must have divined the cause : for soon 
after she showed not only that she understood the reason of Harry’s 
melancholy, but could provide a remedy for it. Her habit was thus 
to watch, unobservedly, those to whom duty or affection bound her, 
and to prevent their designs, or to fulfil them, when she had the 
power. It was this lady’s disposition to think kindnesses, and 
devise silent bounties and to scheme benevolence, for those about 
her. We take such goodness, for the most part, as if it was our 
due ; the Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little 
thanks. Some of us never feel this devotion at all, or are moved 
by it to gratitude or acknowledgment ; others only recall it years 
after, when the days are past in which those sweet kindnesses were 
spent on us, and we offer back our return for the debt by a poor 


92 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


tardy payment of tears. Then forgotten tones of love recur to us, 
and kind glances shine out of the past — oli, so bright and clear — 
oh, so longed after ! — because they are out of reach ; as holiday 
music from withinside a prison wall — or sunshine seen through the 
bars; more prized because unattainable — more bright because of 
the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no 
esc.ape. 

All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take 
of Harry Esmond’s melancholy, upon Tom T usher’s departure, was, 
by a gaiety unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. She 
made his three scholars (herself being the chief one) more cheerful 
than ever they had been before, and more docile, too, all of them 
learning and reading much more than they had been accustomed to 
do. “For who knows,” said the lady, “what may happen, and 
whether we may be able to keep such a learned tutor long ? ” 

Frank Esmond said he for his part did not want to learn any 
more, and cousin Harry might shut up his book whenever he liked, 
if he would come out a-fishing ; and little Beatrix declared she would 
send for Tom Tusher, and he would be glad enough to come to 
Castlewood, if Harry chose to go away. 

At last comes a messenger from Winchester one day, bearer of 
a letter, with a great black seal, from the Dean there, to say that 
his sister was dead, and had left her fortune of <£2000 among her 
six nieces, the Dean’s daughters ; and many a time since has Harry 
Esmond recalled the flushed face and eager look wherewith, after 
this intelligence, his kind lady regarded him. She did not pretend 
to any grief about the deceased relative, from whom she and her 
family had been many years parted. 

When my Lord heard of the news, he also did not make any 
very long face. The money will come very handy to furnish the 
music-room and the cellar, which is getting low, and buy your 
Ladyship a coach and a couple of horses, that will do indifferent 
to ride or for the coach. And, Beatrix, you shall have a spinnet ; 
and, Frank, you shall have a little horse from Hexton Fair; and, 
Harry, you shall have five pounds to buy some books,” said my 
Lord, who was generous with his own, and indeed with other folks’ 
money. “ I wish your aunt would die once a year, Rachel ; we 
could spend your money, and all your sisters’, too.” 

“ I have but one aunt — and — and I have another use for the 
money, my Lord,” says my Lady, turning very red. 

“ Another use, my dear ; and what do you know about money t ” 
(Ties my Lord. “ And wliat tlie devil is there that I don’t give 
you wliich you want % ” 

“I intend to give this money -(^an’t you fancy how, my Lord?” 


I LOSE MY PLACE AS TUTOR 93 

My Lord swore one of his large oaths that he did not know in 
the least what slie meant. 

“ I intend it for Harry Esmond to go to college. Cousin 
Harry,” says my Lady, “ you mustn’t stay longer in this dull place, 
but make a name to yourself, and for us, too, Harry.” 

“D it, Harry’s well enough here,” says my Lord, for a 

moment looking rather sulky. 

“Is Harry going awayl You don’t mean to say you will go 
away ? ” cry out Frank and Beatrix at one breath. 

“ But he will come back : and this will always be his home,” 
cries my Lady, with blue eyes looking a celestial kindness : “ and 
his scholars will always love him ; won’t they ” 

“ By G — , Rachel, you’re a good woman ! ” says my Lord, 
seizing my Lady’s hand, at which she blushed very much, and shrank 
back, putting her children before her. “ I wish you joy, my kins- 
man,” he continued, giving Harry Esmond a hearty slap on the 
shoulder. “ I won’t balk your luck. Go to Cambridge, boy ; 
and when Tusher dies you shall have the living here, if you are not 
better provided by that time. We’ll furnish the dining-room and 
buy the horses another year. I’ll give thee a nag out of the stable : 
take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the coach 
horses ; and God speed thee, my boy ! ” 

“ Have the sorrel, Harry ; ’tis a good one. Father says ’tis 
the best in the stable,” says little Frank, clapping his hands, and 
jumping up. “Let’s come and see him in the stable.” And the 
other, in his delight and eagerness, was for leaving the room tliat 
instant to arrange about his journey. 

The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating 
glances. “ He wishes to be gone already, my Lord,” said she to 
her husband. 

The young man hung back abashed. “Indeed, I would stay 
for ever, if your Ladyship bade me,” he said. 

“And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman,” said 
my Lord. “Tut, tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy 
wild oats ; and take the best luck that Fate sends thee. I wish 
I were a boy again that I might go to college, and taste the 
Trumpington ale.” 

“Ours, indeed, is but a dull home,” cries my Lady, with a 
little of sadness and, maybe, of satire, in her voice: “an old 
glum house, half ruined, and the rest only half furnished ; a 
woman and two children are but poor company for men that are 
accustomed to better. We are only fit to be your worships’ hand- 
maids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie elsewhere than 
at home.” 


94 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“ Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest 
or not,” said my Lord. 

“ In earnest, my Lord ! ” says slie, still clinging by one of her 
(diildren. “ Is there much subject here for joke ? ” And she made 
him a grand curtsey, and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, 
which seemed to say, “ Remember ; you understand me, though he 
does not,” she left the room with her children. 

“ Since she found out that confounded Hexton business,” my 
Lord said— “ and be hanged to them that told her !- — she has not 
been the same woman. She, who used to be as humble as a milk- 
maid, is as proud as a princess,” says my Lord. “ Take my counsel, 
Harry Esmond, and keep clear of women. Since I have had any- 
thing to do with the jades, they have given me nothing but disgust. 
I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she couldn’t speak a word 
of my language, you’d have thought I might lead a quiet life. But 
she tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew girl. 
There was your aunt, for aunt she is — Aunt Jezebel, a pretty life 
your father led with her I And here’s my Lady. When I saw 
her on a pillion riding behind the Dean her father, she looked and 
was such a baby, that a sixpenny doll might have pleased her. 
And now you see what she is — hands off, highty-tighty, high and 
mighty, an empress couldn’t be grander. Pass us the tankard, 
Harry my boy. A mug of beer and a toast at morn, says my host. 

A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear. D it, Polly 

loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove ! ” Indeed, 
I suppose they drank it together; for my Lord was often thick 
in his speech at mid-day dinner ; and at night, at supper, speechless 
altogether. 

Harry Esmond’s departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the 
Lady Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him ; for more than once, 
when the lad, ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go 
away (at any rate stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those 
from whom he had received so many proofs of love and kindness 
inestimable), tried to express to his mistress his sense of gratitude 
to her, and his sorrow at quitting those who had so sheltered and 
tended a nameless and houseless orphan. Lady Castlewood cut short 
his protests of love and his lamentations, and would hear of no 
grief, but only look forward to Harry’s fame and prospects in life. 
“ Our little legacy will keep you for four years like a gentleman. 
Heaven’s Providence, your own genius, industry, honour, must do 
the rest for you. Castlewood will always be a home for you ; and 
these children, whom you have taught and loved, will not forget 
to love you. And, Harry,” said she (and this was the only time 
when she si)oke with a tear in her eye, or a tremor in her voice), 


FAREWELL 


95 


“ it may happen in the course of nature that I shall be called away 
from them : and their father — and — and they will need true friends 
and protectors. Promise me that you will he true to them — as — 
jis I think I have been to you — and a mother’s fond prayer and 
blessing go with you.” 

“ So help me God, madam, I will,” said Harry Esmond, falling 
on his knees, and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. “If 
you will have me stay now, I will. What matters whether or no 
I make my way in life, or whether a poor bastard dies as unknown 
as he is now? ’Tis enough that I have your love and kindness 
surely ; and to make you happy is duty enough for me.” 

“ Happy ! ” says she ; “ but indeed I ought to be, with my 
children, and ” 

“Not happy!” cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, 
though he and his mistress never spoke a word concerning it). “ If 
not happiness, it may be ease. Let me stay and work for you — 
let me stay and be your servant.” 

“ Indeed, you are best away,” said my Lady, laughing, as she 
put her hand on the boy’s head for a moment. “You shall stay 
in no such dull place. You shall go to college and distinguish 
yourself as becomes your name. That is how you shall please me 
best ; and — and if my children want you, or I want you, you shall 
come to us ; and I know we may count on you.” 

“ May Heaven forsake me if you may not ! ” Harry said, getting 
up from his knee. 

“ And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may 
fight,” said my lady, laughing ; which speech made Harry Esmond 
start, and turn red ; for indeed the very thought was in his mind, 
that he would like that some chance should immediately happen 
whereby he might show his devotion. And it pleased him to think 
that his lady had called him “ her knight,” and often and often he 
recalled this to his mind, and prayed that he might be her true 
knight, too. 

My Lady’s bedchamber window looked out over the country, 
and you could see from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood 
village, the green common betwixt that and the Hall, and the old 
bridge which crossed over the river. When Harry Esmond went 
away for Cambridge, little Frank ran alongside his horse as far 
as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a moment, and looked 
back at the house where the best part of his life had been passed. 
It lay before him with its grey familiar towers, a pinnacle or two 
shining in the sun, the buttresses and terrace walls casting great 
blue shades on the grass. And Harry remembered, all his life 
after, how he saw his mistress at the window looking out on him 


()6 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

in a white robe, the little Beatrix’s cliestimt curls resting at her 
inothej^ side. Both waved a farewell to him, and little Frank 
sobbed to leave him. Yes, he mould be liis Lady’s true knight, 
he vowed in his heart ; he waved her an adieu with his hat. The 
village people had Good-bye to say to him too. All knew that 
Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind 
word and a look of farewell. I do not stop to say what adventures 
he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself before he 
had ridden three miles from home. He had not read Monsieur 
Galland’s ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there 
are other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine liopes, 
jind kick them down too, besides honest Alnaschar. 


CHAPTER X 


I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD THERE 
Y LORD, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts 



of his youth, kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first 


^ journey to Cambridge. Their road lay through London, 
where my Lord Viscount would also have Harry stay a few days to 
show him the pleasures of the town before he entered upon his 
university studies, and whilst here Harry’s patron conducted the 
young man to my Lady Dowager’s house at Chelsey near London : 
the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the young 
gentleman and the old should pay a respectful visit in that quarter. 

Her Ladyship the Viscountess Dowager occupied a handsome 
new house in Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, 
always a bright and animated sight with its swarms of sailors, 
barges, and wherries. Harry laughed at recognising in the parlour 
the well-remembered old piece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father’s 
widow was represented as a virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow- 
and-arrow, and encumbered only with that small quantity of 
drapery which it would seem the virgins in King Charles’s day 
were accustomed to wear. 

My Lady Dowager had left off’ this peculiar habit of huntress 
when she married. But though she was now considerably past 
sixty years of age, I believe she thought that airy nymph of the 
picture could still be easily recognised in the venerable personage 
who gave an audience to Harry and his patron. 

She received the young man with even more favour than she 
showed to the elder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in 
French, in which my Lord Castlewood was no great proficient, and 
expressed her satisfaction at finding that Mr. Esmond could speak 
fluently in that language. “ ’Twas the only one fit for polite con- 
versation,” she condescended to say, “and suitable to persons of 
high breeding.” 

My Lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at 
his kinswoman’s behaviour. He said he remembered the time when 
she could speak English fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at 
the loss he had had of such a lovely wife as that. 

7 G 


98 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

My Lady Viscountess deigned to ask his Lordship news of his 
wife and children : she had heard tliat Lady Castlewood had had 
the smallpox ; she hoped she was not so very much disfigured as 
people said. 

At this remark about his wife’s malady, my Lord Viscount 
winced and turned red ; but the Dowager, in speaking of the dis- 
figurement of the young lady, turned to her looking-glass and 
examined her old wrinkled countenance in it with such a grin of 
satisfaction, that it was all her guests could do to refrain from 
laughing in her ancient face. 

She asked Harry what his profession was to be ; and my Lord, 
saying that the lad was to take orders, and have the living of Castle- 
wood when old Doctor Tusher vacated it, she did not seem to show 
any particular anger at the notion of Harry’s becoming a Church of 
England clergyman, nay, was rather glad than otherwise that the 
youth should be so provided for. She bade Mr. Esmond not to 
forget to pay her a visit whenever he passed through London, 
and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse with 
twenty guineas for him, to the tavern at .which my Lord put 
up (the “ Greyhound,” in Charing Cross) ; and, along with this 
welcome gift for her kinsman, she sent a little doll for a present 
to my Lord’s little daughter Beatrix, who was growing beyond the 
age of dolls by this time, and was as tall almost as her venerable 
relative. 

After seeing the town, and going to the plays, my Lord Castle- 
wood and Esmond rode together to Cambridge, spending two 
pleasant days upon the journey. Those rapid new coaches were 
not established, as yet, that performed the whole journey between 
London and the University in a single day ; however, the road 
was pleasant and short enough to Harry Esmond, and he always 
gratefully remembered that happy holiday which his kind patron 
gave him. 

Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cam- 
bridge, to which famous college my Lord had also in his youth 
belonged. Doctor Montague was master at this time, and received 
my Lord Viscount with great politeness : so did Mr. Bridge, who 
was appointed to be Harry’s tutor. Tom Tusher, who was of 
Emanuel College, and was by this time a junior soph, came to wait 
upon my Lord, and to take Harry under his protection ; and com- 
fortable rooms being provided for him in the great court close by 
the gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton’s lodgings, Harry’s 
patron took leave of him with many kind words and blessings, and 
an admonition to him to behave better at the University than my 
Lord himself had ever done. 


THOMAS TUSHER 99 

’Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the par- 
ticulars of Harry Esmond’s college career. It was like that of a 
hundred young gentlemen of that day. But he had the ill-fortune 
to be older by a couple of years than most of his fellow-students ; 
and by his previous solitary mode of bringing up, the circumstances 
of liis life, and the peculiar thoughtfulness and melancholy that had 
naturally engendered, he was, in a great measure, cut off from the 
society of comrades who were much younger and higher-spirited 
than he. His tutor, who had bowed down to the ground, as he 
walked my Lord over the college grass-plats, changed his behaviour 
as soon as the nobleman’s back was turned, and was — at least Harry 
thought so — harsh and overbearing. When the lads used to assemble 
in their greges in hall, Harry found himself alone in the midst of 
that little flock of boys ; they raised a great laugh at him when he 
was set on to read Latin, which he did with the foreign pronuncia- 
tion taught to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than which he 
knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him the object of 
clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of indulging. The young man’s 
si)irit was chafed, and his vanity mortified ; and he found himself, 
for some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had been at Castle- 
wood, whither he longed to return. His birth was a source of 
shame to him, and he fancied a hundred slights and sneers from 
young and old, who, no doubt, had treated him better had he met 
them himself more frankly. And as he looks back, in calmer days, 
upon this period of his life, which he thought so unhappy, he can 
see that his own pride and vanity caused no small part of the morti- 
fications which he attributed to others’ ill-will. The world deals 
good-naturedly with good-natured people, and I never knew a sulky 
misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was he, and not it, that 
was in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice 
on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good-humour ; but 
Mr. Harry chose to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous 
disdain and absurd scorn, and would by no means part from his 
darling injuries, in which, very likely, no man believed but himself. 
As for honest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after a few trials of 
wit with the pupil, that the young man was an ugly subject for 
wit, and that the laugh was often turned against him. This did 
not make tutor and pupil any better friends ; but had, so far, an 
advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge was induced to leave him 
alone ; and so long as he kept his chapels, and did the college exer- 
cises required of him, Bridge was content not to see Harry’s glum 
face in his class, and to leave him to read and sulk for himself in 
his own chamber. 

A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced to 


100 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

have some merit, and a Latin oration (for Mr. Esmond oonld write 
that language better than i)ronounce it), got him a little reputation 
both with the authorities of the University and amongst the young 
men, with whom he began to pass for more than he was worth. 
A few victories over their common enemy, Mr. Bridge, made them 
incline towards him, and look upon him as the champion of their 
order against the seniors. Such of the lads as he took into his 
confidence found him not so gloomy and haughty as his appearance 
led them to believe ; and Don Dismallo, as he was called, became 
presently a person of some little importance in his college, and was, 
as he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerous 
character. 

Don Dismallo was a staunch young Jacobite, like the rest of his 
family ; gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty ; used to invite 
young friends to burgundy, and give the King’s health on King 
James’s birthday ; wore black on the day of his abdication ; fasted 
on the anniversary of King William’s coronation ; and performed a 
thonsand absurd antics, of which he smiles now to think. 

These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher’s part, 
who was always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was 
always in opposition to them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond 
was a Tory. Tom never missed a lecture, and capped the proctor 
with the profoundest of bows. No wonder he sighed over Harry’s 
insubordinate courses, and was angry when the others laughed at 
him. But that Harry was known to have my Lord Viscount’s 
protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him altogether. 
But honest Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the 
friend of a great man. This was not out of scheming on Tom’s part, 
but a natural inclination towards the great. ’Twas no hypocrisy in 
him to flatter, but the bent of his mind, which was always perfectly 
good-humoured, obliging, and servile. 

Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castle- 
wood not only regularly supplied him, but the Dowager of Chelsey 
made her donation annual, and received Esmond at her house near 
London every Christmas ; but, in spite of these benefactions, Esmond 
was constantly poor ; whilst ’twas a wonder with how small a stipend 
from his father Tom Tusher contrived to make a good figure. ’Tis 
true that Harry both spent, gave, and lent his money very freely, 
which Thomas never did. I think he was like the famous Duke of 
Marlborough in this instance, who, getting a present of fifty pieces, 
when a young man, from some foolish woman who fell in love with 
his good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in a drawer scores of 
years after, where it had lain ever since he had sold his beardless 
honour to procure it. I do not mean to say that Tom ever let out 


AT COLLEGE 


101 


his good looks so profitably, for nature had not endowed him with 
any particular charms of person, and he ever was a pattern of moral 
behaviour, losing no opportunity of giving the very best advice to 
his younger comrade ; with which article, to do him justice, he 
parted very freely. Not but that he was a merry fellow, too, in 
his way ; he loved a joke, if by good fortune he understood it, and 
took his share generously of a bottle if another paid for it, and 
especially if there was a young lord in company to drink it. In 
these cases there was not a harder drinker in the University than 
Mr. Tusher could be ; and it was edifying to behold him, fresh 
shaved and with smug face, singing out “ Amen ! ” at early chapel 
in the morning. In his reading, poor Harry permitted himself to go 
a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely had but little 
favour from any one of them ; whereas Tom Tusher, who had no 
more turn for poetry than a ploughboy, nevertheless, by a dogged 
perseverance and obsequiousness in courting the divine Calliope, got 
himself a prize, and some credit in the University, and a fellowship 
at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In this time of Mr. 
Esmond’s life, he got the little reading which he ever could boast 
of, and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the 
books on which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works 
of most of the English, French, and Italian poets came under his 
eyes, and he had a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, 
besides the ancient languages, of which, at least of Latin, he was 
a tolerable master. 

Then, about midway in his University career, he fell to reading 
for the profession to which worldly prudence rather than inclination 
called him, and was perfectly bewildered in theological controversy. 
In the course of his reading (which was neither pursued with that 
seriousness nor that devout mind which such a study requires) the 
youth found himself at the end of one month a Papist, and was 
about to proclaim his faith; the next month a Protestant, with 
Chillingworth ; and the third a sceptic, with Hobbes and Bayle. 
Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind to stray out 
of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-Nine Articles 
with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to other nine- 
and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry’s wilfulness in this matter, 
and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and afflicted 
his senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement between 
them, so that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances, 
from having been intimate friends when they came to college first. 
Politics ran high, too, at the University ; and here, also, the young 
men were at variance. Tom professed himself, albeit a High Church- 
man, a strong King William’s man ; whereas Harry brought his 


102 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


family Tory politics to college with liim, to which he must add a 
dangerous admiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side, or King 
James’s by turns, he often chose to take in the disputes which 
the young gentlemen used to hold in each other’s rooms, where 
they debated on the state of the nation, crowned and deposed 
kings, and toasted past and present heroes and beauties in flagons 
of college ale. 

Thus, either from the circumstances of his birth, or the natural 
melancholy of his disposition, Esmond came to live very much by 
himself during his stay at the University, having neither ambition 
enough to distinguish himself in the college career, nor caring to 
mingle with the mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, 
who were, for the most part, two or three years younger than he. 
He fancied that the gentlemen of the common-room of his college 
slighted him on account of his birth, and hence kept aloof from 
their society. It may be that he made the ill-will, which he 
imagined came from them, by his own behaviour, which, as he looks 
back on it in after-life, he now sees was morose and haughty. At 
any rate, he was as tenderly grateful for kindness as he was sus- 
ceptible of slight and wrong ; and, lonely as he was generally, yet 
had one or two very warm friendships for his companions of those 
days. 

One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the Univer- 
sity, though he was no member of it, and was the professor of a 
science scarce recognised in the common course- of college education. 
This was a French refugee oflicer, who had been driven out of his 
native country at the time of the Protestant persecutions there, 
and who came to Cambridge, where he taught the science of the 
small-sword, and set up a saloon-of-arms. Though he declared him- 
self a Protestant, ’twas said Mr. Moreau was a Jesuit in disguise ; 
indeed, he brought very strong recommendations to the Tory party, 
which was pretty strong in that University, and very likely was 
one of the many agents whom King James had in this country. 
Esmond found this gentleman’s conversation very much more agree- 
able and to his taste than tlie talk of the college divines in the 
common-room ; he never wearied of Moreau’s stories of the wars of 
Turenne and Condd, in which he had borne a part; and being 
familiar with the French tongue from his youth, and in a place 
where but few spoke it, his company became very agreeable to the 
brave old professor of arms, whose favourite pupil he was, and who 
made Mr. Esmond a very tolerable proficient in the noble science 
of escrime. 

At the next term Esmond was to take his degree of Bachelor 
of Arts, and afterwards, in proper season, to assume the cassock 


THE PULPIT NOT MY CALLING 103 

and bands which his fond mistress would have him wear. Tom 
Tusher himself was a parson and a fellow of his college by this 
time ; and Harry felt that he would very gladly cede his right to 
the living of Castlewood to Tom, and that his own calling was in 
no way the pulpit. But as he was bound, before all things in the 
world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that a refusal on 
his part would grieve her, he determined to give her no hint of his 
unwillingness to the clerical office : and it was in this unsatisfactory 
mood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation he should 
have at Castlewood before he took orders. 


CHAPTER XI 


I COME HOME FOR A HOLIDAY TO CASTLEWOOD, AND 
FIND A SKELETON IN THE HOUSE 

AT his third long vacation, Esmond came as usual to Castle- 
wood, always feeling an eager thrill of pleasure when he 
^ found himself once more in the house where he had passed 
so many years, and beheld the kind familiar eyes of his mistress 
looking upon him. She and her children (out of whose company she 
scarce ever saw him) came to greet him. Miss Beatrix was grown 
so tall that Harry did not quite know whether he might kiss her 
or no ; and she blushed and held back when he offered that saluta- 
tion, though she took it, and even courted it, w'hen they were alone. 
The young lord was shooting up to be like his gallant father in 
look, though with his mother’s kind eyes : the lady of Castlewood 
herself seemed grown, too, since Harry saw her — in her look more 
stately, in her person fuller, in her face still as ever most tender 
and friendly, a greater air of command and’ decision than had 
appeared in that guileless sweet countenance which Harry remem- 
bered so gratefully. The tone of her voice was so much deeper 
and sadder when she spoke and welcomed him, that it quite startled 
Esmond, who looked up at her surprised as she spoke, when she 
withdrew her eyes from him ; nor did she ever look at him after- 
wards when his own eyes were gazing upon her. A something 
hinting at grief and secret, and filling his mind with alarm unde- 
finable, seemed to speak with that low thrilling voice of hers, and 
look out of those clear sad eyes. Her greeting to Esmond was so 
cold that it almost pained the lad (who would have liked to fall on 
his knees, and kiss the skirt of her robe, so fond and ardent was 
his respect and regard for her), and he faltered in uJnswering the 
questions which she, hesitating on her side, began to put to him. 
Was he happy at Cambridge'? Did he study too hard ? She hoped 
not. He had grown very tall, and looked very well. 

“ He has got a moustache ! ” cries out Master Esmond. 

“ Why does he not wear a peruke like my Lord Mohun ? ” 
asked Miss Beatrix. “My Lord says that nobody wears tlieir 
own hair.” 


MY MISTRESS 


105 


“ I believe you will have to occupy your old chamber, ” says 
iny Lady. “ I hope the housekeeper has got it ready.” 

“ Why, Mamma, you have been there ten times these three 
days yourself ! ” exclaims Frank. 

“ And she cut some flowers which you planted in my garden — 
do you remember, ever so many years ago'? — when I was quite 
a little girl,” cries out Miss Beatrix, on tiptoe. “ And Mamma 
put them in your window.” 

“ I remember when you grew well after you were ill that you 
used to like roses,” said the lady, blushing like one of them. They 
all conducted Harry Esmond to his chamber ; the children running 
before, Harry walking by his mistress hand-in-hand. 

The old room had been ornamented and beautified not a little 
to receive him. The flowers were in the window in a china vase ; 
and there was a fine new counterpane on the bed, which chatterbox 
Beatrix said Mamma had made too. A fire was crackling on the 
hearth, although it was June. My Lady thought the room wanted 
warming ; everything was done to make him happy and welcome : 
“ And you are not to be a page any longer, but a gentleman and 
kinsman, and to walk with papa and mamma,” said the children. 
And as soon as his dear mistress and children had left him to him- 
self, it was with a heart overflowing with love and gratefulness that 
he flung himself down on his knees by the side of the little bed, 
and asked a blessing upon those who were so kind to him. 

The children, who are always house telltales, soon made him 
acquainted with the little history of the house and family. Papa 
had been to London twice. Papa often went away now. Papa 
had taken Beatrix to Westlands, where she was taller than Sir 
George Harper’s second daughter, though she was two years younger. 
Papa had taken Beatrix and Frank both to Bellminster, where 
Frank had got the better of Lord Bellminster’s son in a boxing- 
match — my Lord, laughing, told Harry afterwards. Many gentle- 
men came to stop with papa, and papa had gotten a new game 
from London, a French game, called a billiard — that the French 
king played it very well : and the Dowager Lady Castlewood had 
sent Miss Beatrix a present ; and papa had gotten a new chaise, 
with two little horses, which he drove himself, beside the coach, 
which mamma went in ; and Doctor T usher was a cross old plague, 
and they did not like to learn from him at all ; and papa did not 
care about them learning, and laughed when they were at their 
books, but mamma liked them to learn, and taught them ; and “ I 
don’t think papa is fond of mamma,” said Miss Beatrix, with her 
great eyes. She had come quite close up to Harry Esmond by the 
time this prattle took place, and was on his knee, and had examined 


106 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

all the points of his dress, and all the good or bad features of his 
homely face. 

“ You shouldn’t say that papa is not fond of mamma,” said the 
boy, at this confession. “ Mamma never said so ; and mamma for- 
bade you to say it. Miss Beatrix.” 

’Twas this, no doubt, that accounted for the sadness in Lady 
Castlewood’s eyes, and the plaintive vibrations of her voice. Who 
does not know of eyes, lighted by love once, where the flame shines 
no more? — of lamps extinguished, once properly trimmed and tended? 
Every man has such in his house. Such mementoes make our 
splendidest chambers look blank and sad ; such faces seen in a day 
cast a gloom upon our sunshine. So oaths mutually sworn, and 
invocations of Heaven, and ])riestly ceremonies, and fond belief, 
and love, so fond and faithful that it never doubted but that it 
should live for ever, are all of no avail towards making love eternal : 
it dies, in spite of the banns and the priest ; and I have often 
thought there should be a visitation of the sick for it, and a funeral 
service, and an extreme unction, and an obi in iMce. It has its 
course, like all mortal things — its beginning, progress, and decay. 
It buds and it blooms out into sunshine, and it withers and ends. 
Strephon and Chloe languish apart ; join in a rapture : and presently 
you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon has broken his crook 
across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no marks of 
rupture? Not all the priests of Hymen, not all the incantations 
to the gods, can make it whole ! 

Waking up from dreams, books, and visions of college honours, 
in which for two years Harry Esmond had been immersed, he found 
himself, instantly, on his return home, in the midst of this actual 
tragedy of life, which absorbed and interested him more than all 
his tutor had taught him. The persons whom he loved best in 
the world, and to whom he owed most, were living unhappily 
together. The gentlest and kindest of women was suffering ill-usage 
and shedding tears in secret : the man who made her wretched by 
neglect, if not by violence, was Harry’s benefactor and patron. In 
houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is 
discord at the centre, the whole household becomes hypocritical, 
and each lies to his neighbour. The husband (or it may be the 
wife) lies when the visitor comes in, and wears a grin of reconcilia- 
tion or politeness before him. The wife lies (indeed, her business 
is to do that, and to smile, however much she is beaten), swallows 
her tears, and lies to her lord and master ; lies in bidding little 
Jacky respect dear papa : lies in assuring Grandpapa that she is 
perfectly happy. The servants lie, wearing grave faces behind their 
master’s chair, and pretending to be unconscious of the fighting ; 


THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 107 

and so, from morning till bedtime, life is passed in falsehood. And 
wiseacres call this a proper regard of morals, and ])oint ont Bancis 
and Philemon as examples of a good life. 

If my Lady did not speak of her griefs to Harry Esmond, my 
Lord was by no means reserved when in his cups, and spoke his 
mind very freely, bidding Harry in his coarse way, and with his 
blunt language, beware of all women as cheats, jades, jilts, and using 
other unmistakable monosyllables in speaking of them. Indeed, ’twas 
the fashion of the day, as I must own ; and there’s not a writer of 
my time of any note, with the exception of poor Dick Steele, that 
does not speak of a woman as of a slave, and scorn and use her as 
such. Mr. Pope, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Addison, Mr. Gay, every one 
of ’em, sing in this key, each according to his nature and politeness, 
and louder and fouler than all in abuse is Doctor Swift, who sjioke 
of them, as he treated them, worst of all. 

Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married 
people come in my mind from the husband’s rage and revolt at 
discovering that his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all 
his wishes, and is church-sworn to honour and obey him — is his 
superior ; and that he^ and not she, ought to be the subordinate of 
the twain ; and in these controversies, I think, lay the cause of my 
Lord’s anger against his lady. When he left her, she began to 
think for herself, and her thoughts were not in his favour. After 
the illumination, when the love-lamp is put out that anon we spoke 
of, and by the common daylight we look at the picture, what a 
daub it looks ! what a clumsy effigy ! How many men and wives 
come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a 
woman to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love 
and honour a dullard, it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, 
whenever in his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave 
and drudge yonder is, in truth, his superior; that the woman 
who does his bidding, and submits to his Irumour, should be his 
lord ; that she can think a thousand things beyond the power of his 
muddled brains ; and that in yonder head, on the pillow opposite to 
him, lie a thousand feelings, mysteries of thought, latent scorns and 
rebellions, whereof he only dimly perceives the existence as they 
look out furtively from her eyes : treasures of love doomed to perish 
without a hand to gather them ; sweet fancies and images of beauty 
that would grow and unfold themselves into flower ; bright wit that 
would shine like diamonds could it be brought into the sun : and 
the tyrant in possession crushes the outbreak of all these, drives 
them back like slaves into the dungeon and darkness, and chafes 
without that his prisoner is rebellious, and his sworn subject un- 
dutiful and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, 


108 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and the lord and lady there saw each other as they were. With 
her illness and altered beauty my Lord’s fire for his wife dis- 
appeared ; with his selfishness and faithlessness her foolish fiction 
of love and reverence was rent away. Love ! — who is to love what 
is base and unlovely 1 Respect ! — who is to respect what is gross 
and sensual 1 Not all the marriage oaths sworn before all the 
parsons, cardinals, ministers, muftis, and rabbins in the world, can 
bind to that monstrous allegiance. This couple was living apart 
then ; the woman happy to be allowed to love and tend her children 
(who were never of her own good-will away from her), and thankful 
to have saved such treasures as these out of the wreck in which the 
better part of her heart went down. 

These young ones had had no instructors save their mother, 
and Doctor Tusher for their theology occasionally, and had made 
more progress than might have been expected under a tutor so 
indulgent and fond as Lady Castlewood. Beatrix could sing and 
dance like a nymph. Her voice was her father’s delight after 
dinner. She ruled over the house with little imperial ways, which 
her parents coaxed and laughed at. She had long learned the 
value of her bright eyes, and tried experiments in coquetry, in 
corpore vili, upon rustics and country squires, until she should 
prepare to conquer the world and the fashion. She put on a new 
riband to welcome Harry Esmond, made eyes at him, and directed 
her young smiles at him, not a little to the amusement of the 
young man, and the joy of her father, who laughed his great laugh, 
and encouraged her in her thousand antics. Lady Castlewood 
watched the child gravely and sadly ; the little one was pert in her 
replies to her mother, yet eager in her protestations of love and 
promises of amendment ; and as ready to cry (after a little quarrel 
brought on by her own giddiness) until she had won back her 
mamma’s favour, as she was to risk the kind lady’s displeasure by 
fresh outbreaks of restless vanity. From her mother’s sad looks 
she fled to her father’s chair and boozy laughter. She already set 
the one against the other : and the little rogue delighted in the 
mischief which she knew how to make so early. 

The young heir of Castlewood was spoiled by father and mother 
both. He took their caresses as men do, and as if they were his 
right. He had his hawks and his spaniel dog, his little horse and 
his beagles. He had learned to ride, and to drink, and to shoot 
flying : and he had a small court, the sons of the huntsman and 
woodman, as became the heir-apparent, taking after the example of 
my Lord his father. If he had a headache, his mother was as much 
frightened as if the plague were in the house : my Lord laughed 
and jeered in his abrupt way — (indeed, ’twas on the day after New 


THE SKELETON IN THE HOUSE 109 

Year’s Day, and an excess of mince-pie) — and said with some of his 

usual oaths, “ D it, Harry Esmond — you see how my Lady takes 

on about Frank’s megrim. She used to be sorry about me, my boy 
(pass the tankard, Harry), and to be frightened if I had a headache 
once. She don’t care about my head now. They’re like that — women 
are — all the same, Harry, all jilts in their hearts. Stick to college 
— stick to punch and buttery ale : and never see a woman that’s 
handsomer than an old cinder-faced bedmaker. That’s my counsel.” 

It was my Lord’s custom to fling out many jokes of this nature, 
in presence of his wife and children, at meals — clumsy sarcasms 
which my Lady turned many a time, or which, sometimes, she 
affected not to hear, or which now and again would hit their mark 
and make the poor victim wince (as you could see by her flushing 
face and eyes filling with tears), or which again worked her up to 
anger and retort, when, in answer to one of these heavy bolts, she 
would flash back with a quivering reply. The pair were not happy ; 
nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that youthful love 
and truth should end in bitterness and bankruptcy ! To see a 
young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old 
couple loving each other is the best sight of all. Harry Esmond 
became the confidant of one and the other — that is, my Lord told 
the lad all his griefs and wrongs (which were indeed of Lord Castle- 
wood’s own making), and Harry divined my Lady’s ; his affection 
leading him easily to penetrate the hypocrisy under which Lady 
Castlewood generally chose to go disguised, and see her heart 
aching whilst her face wore a smile. ’Tis a hard task for women 
in life, that mask which the world bids them wear. But there is 
no greater crime than for a woman who is ill-used and unhappy 
to show that she is so. The world is quite relentless about bidding 
her to keep a cheerful face ; and our women, like the Malabar 
wives, are forced to go smiling and painted to sacrifice themselves 
with their husbands ; their relations being the most eager to push 
them on to their duty, and, under their shouts and applauses, to 
smother and hush their cries of pain. 

So, into the sad secret of his patron’s household, Harry Esmond 
became initiated, he scarce knew how. It had passed under his 
eyes two years before, when he could not understand it ; but read- 
ing, and thought, and experience of men, had oldened him ; and 
one of the deepest sorrows of a life which had never, in truth, been 
very happy, came upon him now, when he was compelled to under- 
stand and pity a grief which he stood quite powerless to relieve. 

It hath been said my Lord would never take the oath of 
allegiance, nor his seat as a peer of tlie kingdom of Ireland, where. 


110 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


indeed, he had but a nominal estate ; and refused an English 
peerage which King William’s government offered him as a bribe 
to secure his loyalty. 

He might have accepted this, and would, doubtless, but for the 
earnest remonstrances of his wife, who ruled her husband’s opinions 
better than she could govern his conduct, and who, being a simple- 
hearted woman, with but one rule of faith and right, never thought 
of swerving from her fidelity to the exiled family, or of recognising 
any other sovereign but King James; and though she acquiesced 
in the doctrine of obedience to the reigning power, no temptation, 
she thought, could induce her to acknowledge the Prince of Orange 
as rightful monarch, nor to let her lord so acknowledge him. So 
my Lord Castlewood remained a nonjuror all his life nearly, though 
his self-denial caused him many a pang, and left him sulky and 
out of humour. 

The year after the Revolution, and all through King William’s 
life, ’tis known there were constant intrigues for the restoration 
of the exiled family ; but if my Lord Castlewood took any share 
of these, as is probable, ’twas only for a short time, and when 
Harry Esmond was too young to be introduced into such important 
secrets. 

But in the year 1695, when that conspiracy of Sir John 
Fenwick, Colonel Lowick, and others, was set on foot, for way- 
laying King William as he came from Hampton Court to London, 
and a secret plot was formed, in which a- vast number of the 
nobility and people of honour were engaged, Father Holt appeared 
at Castlewood, and brought a young friend with him, a gentleman 
whom ’twas easy to see that both my Lord and the Father treated 
with uncommon deference. Harry Esmond saw this gentleman, 
and knew and recognised him in after life, as shall be shown in 
its place ; and he has little doubt now that my Lord Viscount 
was implicated somewhat in the transactions which always kept 
Father Holt employed and travelling hither and thither under a 
dozen of different names and disguises. The Father’s companion 
went by the name of Captain James ; and it was under a very 
different name and appearance that Harry Esmond afterwards 
saw him. 

It was the next year that the Fenwick conspiracy blew up, 
which is a matter of public history now, and which ended in the 
execution of Sir John and many more, who suffered manfully for 
their treason, and who were attended to Tyburn by my Lady^s 
father Dean Armstrong, Mr. Collier, and other stout nonjuring 
clergymen, who absolved them at the gallows-foot. 

’Tis known that when Sir John was apprehended, discovery was 


I SEE MR. HOLT AGAIN 


11 


made of a great number of names of gentlemen engaged in the con- 
spiracy ; when, with a noble wisdom and clemency, the Prince 
burned the list of conspirators furnished to him, and said he would 
know no more. Now it was after this that Lord Castlewood swore 
his great oath, that he would never, so help him Heaven, be 
engaged in any transaction against that brave and merciful man ; 
and so he told Holt when the indefatigable priest visited him, and 
would have had liini engaged in a further conspiracy. After this 
my Lord ever spoke of King William as he was — as one of the 
wisest, the bravest, and the greatest of men. My Lady Esmond 
(for her part) said she could never pardon the King, first, for oust- 
ing his father-in-law from his throne, and, secondly, for not being 
constant to his wife, the Princess Mary. Indeed, I think if Nero 
were to rise again, and be King of England, and a good family man, 
the ladies would pardon him. My Lord laughed at his wife’s 
objections — the standard of virtue did not fit him much. 

The last conference which Mr. Holt had with his Lordship took 
place when Harry was come home for his first vacation from 
college (HaiTy saw his old tutor but for a half-hour, and exchanged 
no private words with him), and their talk, whatever it might be, 
left my Lord Viscount very much disturbed in mind — so much so 
that his wife, and his young kinsman, Henry Esmond, could not 
but observe his disquiet. After Holt was gone, my Lord rebuffed 
Esmond, and again treated him with the greatest deference; he 
shunned his wife’s questions and company, and looked at his 
children with such a face of gloom and anxiety, muttering, “Poor 
children — poor children ! ” in a way that could not but fill those 
whose life it was to watch him and obey him with great alarm. 
For which gloom, each person interested in the Lord Castlewood 
framed in his or her own mind an interpretation. 

My Lady, with a laugh of cruel bitterness, said, “ I suppose the 
person at Hexton has been ill, or has scolded him ” (for my Lord’s 
infatuation about Mrs. Marwood was known only too well). Young 
Esmond feared for his money affairs, into the condition of which 
he had been initiated ; and that the expenses, always greater than 
his revenue, had caused Lord Castlewood disquiet. 

One of the causes why my Lord Viscount had taken young 
Esmond into his special favour was a trivial one, that hath not 
before been mentioned, though it was a very lucky accident in 
Henry Esmond’s life. A very few months after my Lord’s coming 
to Castlewood, in the winter time — the little boy being a child in 
a petticoat, trotting about — it happened that little Frank was with 
his father after dinner, who fell asleep over his wine, heedless of 
the child, who crawled to the fire ; and, as good fortune would have 


112 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


it, Esmond was sent by his mistress for the boy just as the poor 
little screaming urchin’s coat was set on fire by a log; when 
Esmond, rushing forward, tore the dress off the infant, so that his 
own hands were burned more than the child’s, who was frightened 
rather than hurt by this accident. But certainly ’twas providential 
that a resolute person should have come in at that instant, or the 
child had been burned to death probably, my Lord sleeping very 
heavily after drinking, and not waking so cool as a man should who 
had a danger to face. 

Ever after this the father, loud in his expressions of remorse 
and humility for being a tipsy good-for-nothing, and of admiration 
for Harry Esmond, whom his Lordship would style a hero for 
doing a very trifling service, had the tenderest regard for his son’s 
preserver, and Harry became quite as one of the family. His 
burns were tended with the greatest care by his kind mistress, who 
said that Heaven had sent him to be the guardian of her children, 
and that she would love him all her life. 

And it was after this, and from the very great love and tender- 
ness which had grown up in this little household, rather than from 
the exhortations of Dean Armstrong (though these had no small 
weight with him), that Harry came to be quite of the religion of 
Ins house and his dear mistress, of which he has ever since been a 
professing member. As for Doctor Tusher’s boasts that he was 
the cause of this conversion — even in these young days Mr. Esmond 
had such a contempt for the Doctor, that had Tusher bade him 
believe anything (which he did not— never meddling at all), Harry 
would that instant have questioned the truth on’t. 

My Lady seldom drank wine ; but on certain days of the year, 
such as birthdays (poor Harry had never a one) and anniversaries, 
she took a little ; and this day, the 29th December, was one. At 
the end, then, of this year, ’96, it might have been a fortnight after 
Mr. Holt’s last visit. Lord Castlewood being still very gloomy in 
mind, and sitting at table —my Lady bidding a servant bring her 
a glass of wine, and looking at her husband with one of her sweet 
smiles, said — 

“My Lord, will you not fill a bumper too, and let me call a 
toast 1 ” 

“ What is it, Rachel ? ” says he, holding out his empty glass to 
be filled. 

“’Tis the 29th of December,” says my Lady, with her fond 
look of gratitude : “and my toast is, ‘ Harry — and God bless him, 
who saved my boy’s life ! ’ ” 

My Lord looked at Harry hard, and drank the glass, but clapped 
it down on the table in a moment, and, with a sort of groan, rose 


ILL COMPANY 113 

lip, and went out of the room. What was the matter 1 We all 
knew that some great grief was over him. 

Whether my Lord’s prudence had made him richer, or legacies 
had fallen to him, which enabled him to support a greater establish- 
ment than that frugal one which had been too much for his small 
means, Harry Esmond knew not; but the house of Castlewood 
was now on a scale much more costly than it had been during the 
first years of his Lordship’s coming to the title. There were more 
horses in the stable and more servants in the hall, and many more 
guests coming and going now than formerly, when it was found 
difficult enough by the strictest economy to keep the house as 
befitted one of his Lordship’s rank, and the estate out of debt. 
And it did not require very much penetration to find that many of 
the new acquaintances at Castlewood were not agreeable to the 
lady there : not that she ever treated them or any mortal with any- 
thing but courtesy ; but they were persons who could not be 
welcome to her ; and whose society a lady so refined and reserved 
could scarce desire for her children. There came fuddling squires 
from the country round, who bawled their songs under her windows 
and drank themselves tipsy with my Lord’s punch and ale : there 
came officers from Hexton, in whose company our little lord was 
made to hear talk and to drink, and swear too, in a way that made 
the delicate lady tremble for her son. Esmond tried to console her 
by saying, what he knew of his College experience, that with this 
sort of company and conversation a man must fall in sooner or late 
in his course through the world ; and it mattered very little whether 
he heard it at twelve years old or twenty^ — the youths who quitted 
mothers’ apron strings the latest being not uncommonly the wildest 
rakes. But it was about her daughter that Lady Castlewood was 
the most anxious, and the danger which she thought menaced the 
little Beatrix from the indulgences which her father gave her (it 
must be owned that my Lord, since these unhappy domestic differ- 
ences especially, was at once violent in his language to the children 
when angry, as he was too familiar, not to say coarse, when he was 
in a good humour), and from the company into which the careless 
lord brought the child. 

Not very far off from Castlewood is Sark Castle, where the 
Marchioness of Sark lived, who was known to have been a mistress 
of the late King Charles — and to this house, whither indeed a great 
part of the country gentry went, my Lord insisted upon going, not 
only himself, but on taking his little daughter and son, to play with 
the cliildren there. The children were nothing loth, for the house 
was splendid, and the welcome kind enough. But my Lady, justly 
no doubt, thought that the children of such a mother as that noted 


114 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Lady Sark had been, could be no good company for her two ; and 
spoke her mind to her lord. His own language when he was 
thwarted was not indeed of the gentlest : to be brief, there was a 
family dispute on this, as there had been on many other points — 
and the lady was not only forced to give in, for the other’s will was 
law — nor could she, on account of their tender age, tell her children 
what was the nature of her objection to their visit of pleasure, or 
indeed mention to them any objection at all — but she had the 
additional secret mortification to find them returning delighted with 
their new friends, loaded with presents from them, and eager to be 
allowed to go back to a place of such delights as Sark Castle. 
Every year she thought the company there would be more dangerous 
to her daughter, as from a child Beatrix grew to a woman, and her 
daily increasing beauty, and many faults of character too, expanded. 

It was Harry Esmond’s lot to see one of the visits which the 
old Lady of Sark paid to the lady of Castle wood Hall : whither 
she came in state with six chestnut horses and blue ribands, a page 
on each carriage step, a gentleman of the horse, and armed servants 
riding before and behind her. And, but that it was unpleasant to 
see Lady Castlewood’s face, it was amusing to watch the behaviour 
of the two enemies : the frigid patience of the younger lady, and 
the unconquerable good-humour of the elder — who would see no 
offence whatever her rival intended, and who never ceased to smile 
and to laugh, and to coax the children, and to pay compliments to 
every man, woman, child, nay dog, or chair and table, in Castlewood, 
so bent was she upon admiring everything there. She lauded the 
children, and wished — as indeed she well might — that her own 
family had been brought up as well as those cherubs. She had 
never seen such a complexion as dear Beatrix’s — though to be sure 
she had a right to it from father and mother — Lady Castlewood’s 
was indeed a wonder of freshness, and Lady Sark sighed to think 
she had not been born a fair woman ; and remarking Harry Esmond, 
with a fascinating superannuated smile, she complimented him on 
his wit, which she said she could see from his eyes and forehead ; 
and vowed that she would never have him at Sark until her daughter 
were out of the way. 


CHAPTER XII 

MY LORD MOHUN COMES AMONG US FOR NO GOOD 

T here had ridden along with this old Princess’s cavalcade 
two gentlemen : her son my Lord Firebrace and his friend 
my Lord Mohim, wlio both were greeted with a great deal 
of cordiality by the hospitable Lord of Castlewood. My Lord 
Firebrace was but a feeble-minded and weak-limbed young noble- 
man, small in stature and limited in understanding — to judge from 
the talk young Esmond had with him ; but the other was a person 
of a handsome presence, with the bel air, and a bright daring war- 
like aspect, which, according to the chronicle of those days, had 
already achieved for him the conquest of several beauties and toasts. 
He had fought and conquered in France, as well as in Flanders ; 
he had served a couple of campaigns with the Prince of Baden on 
the Danube, and witnessed the rescue of Vienna from the Turk. 
And he spoke of his military exploits pleasantly, and with the manly 
freedom of a soldier, so as to delight all his hearers at Castlewood, 
who were little accustomed to meet a companion so agreeable. 

On the first day this noble company came, my Lord would not 
hear of their departure before dinner, and carried away the gentle- 
men to amuse them, whilst his wife was left to do the honours of 
her house to the old Marchioness and her daughter within. They 
looked at the stables, where my Lord Mohun })raised the horses, 
though there was but a poor show there : they walked over the 
old house and gardens, and fought tlie siege of Oliver’s time over 
again : they played a game of rackets in the old court, where my 
Lord Castlewood beat my Lord Mohun, who said he loved ball of 
all things, and would quickly come back to Castlewood for his 
revenge. After dinner they played bowls, and drank punch in the 
green alley ; and when they parted they were sworn friends, my 
Lord Castlewood kissing the other lord before he mounted on horse- 
back, and pronouncing him the best companion he had met for 
many a long day. All night long, over his tobacco-pipe, Castle- 
wood did not cease to talk to Harry Esmond in praise of his new 
friend, and in fact did not leave off speaking of him until his Lord' 
ship was so tipsy that he coqld not speak plainly any more. 


116 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


At breakfast next day it was the same talk renewed ; and when 
my Lady said there was something free in the Lord Mohim’s looks 
and manner of speech which caused her to mistrust him, her lord 
burst out with one of his laughs and oaths ; said that he never 
liked man, woman, or beast, but what she was sure to be jealous 
of it ; that Mohun was the prettiest fellow in England ; that he 
hoped to see more of him whilst in the country ; and that he would 
let Mohun know what my Lady Prude said of him. 

“ Indeed,” Lady Castlewood said, “ I liked his conversation well 
enough. ’Tis more amusing than that of most people I know. I 
thought it, I own, too free ; not from what he said, as rather from 
what he implied.” 

“ Psha ! your Ladyship does not know the world,” said her 
husband ; “ and you have always been as squeamish as when you 
were a miss of fifteen.” 

“You found no fault when I was a miss at fifteen.” 

“ Begad, madam, you are grown too old for a pinafore now ; 
and I hold that ’tis for me to judge what company my wife shall 
see,” said my Lord, slapping the table. 

“ Indeed, Francis, I never thought otherwise,” answered my 
Lady, rising and dropping him a curtsey, in which stately action, 
if there was obedience, there was defiance too ; and in which 
a bystander deeply interested in the happiness of that pair 
as Harry Esmond was, might see how hopelessly separated they 
were ; what a great gulf of difference and discord had run between 
them. 

“ By G — d ! Mohun is the best fellow in England ; and I’ll 
invite him here, just to plague that woman. Did you ever see such 
a frigid insolence as it is, Harry 1 That’s the way she treats me,” 
he broke out, storming, and his face growing red as he clenched his 
fists and went on. “ I’m nobody in my own house. I’m to be the 
humble servant of that parson’s daughter. By Jove ! I’d rather 
she should fling the dish at my head than sneer at me as she does. 
She puts me to shame before the children with her d — d airs ; and. 
I’ll swear, tells Frank and Beaty that papa’s a reprobate, and that 
they ought to despise me.” 

“ Indeed and indeed, sir, I never heard her say a word but of 
respect regarding you,” Harry Esmond interposed. 

“No, curse it ! I wish she would speak. But she never does. 
She scorns me, and holds her tongue. She keeps off from me, as 
if I was a pestilence. By George ! she was fond enough of her 
pestilence once. And when I came a-courting, you would see miss 
blush — blush red, by George ! for joy. Why, what do you think 
she said to me, Harry? She said herself, when I joked with her 


117 


MY LORD COMPLAINS 

about her d — d smiling red cheeks : ‘ ’Tis as they do at Saint 
James’s; I put up my red flag when my king comes.’ I was the 
king, you see, she meant. But now, sir, look at her ! I believe 
she would be glad if I was dead ; and dead I’ve been to her these 
five years — ever since you all of you had the smallpox : and she 
never forgave me for going away.” 

“Indeed, my Lord, though ’twas hard to forgive, I think my 
mistress forgave it,” Harry Esmond said; “and remember how 
eagerly she watched your Lordship’s return, and how sadly she 
turned away when she saw your cold looks.” 

“ Damme ! ” cries out my Lord ; “ would you have had me wait 
and catch the smallpox? Where the deuce had been the good of 
that ? I’ll bear danger with any man — but not useless danger — no, 
no. Thank you for nothing. And — you nod your head, and I 
know very well. Parson Harry, what you mean. There was the — 
the other affair to make her angry. But is a woman never to 
forgive a husband who goes a-tripping? Do you take me for a 
saint ? ” 

“ Indeed, sir, I do not,” says Harry, with a smile. 

“ Since that time my wife’s as cold as the statue at Charing 
Cross. I tell thee she has no forgiveness in her, Henry. Her cold- 
ness blights my whole life, and sends me to the punch-bowl, or 
driving about the country. My children are not mine, but hers, 
when we are together. ’Tis only when she is out of sight with her 
abominable cold glances, that run through me, that they’ll come to 
me, and that I dare to give them so much as a kiss ; and that’s 
why I take ’em and love ’em in other people’s houses, Harry. I’m 
killed by the very virtue of that proud woman. Virtue ! give me 
the virtue that can forgive; give me the virtue that thinks not 
of preserving itself, but of making other folks happy. Damme, 
what matters a scar or two if ’tis got in helping a friend in 
ill fortune ? ” 

And my Lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught 
from the tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, 
and thought how the poor preacher of this self-sacrifice had fled 
from the smallpox, which the lady had borne so cheerfully, and 
which had been the cause of so much disunion in the lives of all in 
this house. “ How well men preach,” thought the young man, 
“ and each is the example in his own sermon ! How each has a 
story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are riglit or wrong 
as you will.” Harry’s heart was pained within him, to watch the 
struggles and pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend 
and protector. 

“ Indeed, sir,” said he, “ I wish to God that my mistress could 


118 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

hear you speak as I have heard you ; she would know much that 
would make her life the happier, could she hear it.” But my Lord 
flung away with one of his oaths, and a jeer ; he said that Parson 
Harry was a good fellow ; but that as for women, all women were 
alike — all jades and heartless. So a man dashes a fine vase down, 
and despises it for being broken. It may be worthless — true : but 
who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it ? 

Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress 
and her husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my 
Lord’s state of mind was, and that he really had a great deal of 
that love left in his heart, and ready for his wife’s acceptance if she 
would take it, whether he could not be a means of reconciliation 
between these two persons, whom he revered the most in the world. 
And he cast about how he should break a part of his mind to his 
mistress, and warn her that in his, Harry’s opinion, at least, her 
husband was still her admirer, and even her lover. 

But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when 
he ventured to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone 
(for long confidence and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty 
had given him a sort of authority in the house, which he resumed 
as soon as ever he returned to it), and with a speech that should 
have some effect, as, indeed, it was uttered with the speaker’s 
own heart, he ventured most gently to hint to his adored mistress 
that she was doing her husband harm by her ill opinion of him, 
and that the happiness of all the family depended upon setting 
her right. 

She, who was ordinarily calm and most gentle, and full of 
smiles and soft attentions, fiushed up when young Esmond so spoke 
to her, and rose from lier chair, looking at him with a haughtiness 
and indignation that he had never before known her to display. 
She was quite an altered being for that moment ; and looked an 
angry princess insulted by a vassal. 

“ Have you ever heard me utter a word in my Lord’s disparage- 
ment?” she asked hastily, hissing out her words, and stamping 
her foot. 

“ Indeed, no,” Esmond said, looking down. 

“ Are you come to me as his ambassador — y(M ? ” she con- 
tinued. 

“I would sooner see peace between you than anything else 
in the world,” Harry answered, “and would go of any embassy 
that had that end.” 

“ So you are my Lord’s go-between ? ” she went on, not regard- 
ing this speech. “ You are sent to bid me back into slavery again, 
and inform me that my Lord’s favour is graciously restored to his 


AN AMBASSADOR 119 

liandmaid ? He is weary of Covent Garden, is he, that he comes 
home and would have the fatted calf killed 1 ” 

“ There’s good authority for it surely,” said Esmond. 

“For a son, yes ; but my Lord is not my son. It was he 
who cast me away from him. It w'as he who broke our happiness 
down, and he bids me to repair it. It was he who sliowed liimself 
to me at last, as he was, not as I had thought him. It is he who 
conies before my children stupid and senseless with wine — who 
leaves our company for that of frequenters of taverns and bagnios 
— who goes from his home to the city yonder and his friends there, 
and when he is tired of them returns hither, and expects that I 
shall kneel and welcome him. And he sends you as his chamber- 
lain ! What a proud embassy ! Monsieur, I make you my com- 
pliment of the new place.” 

“It would be a proud embassy, and a happy embassy too, 
could I bring you and my Lord together,” Esmond replied. 

“ I presume you have fulfilled your mission now, sir. ’Twas a 
pretty one for you to undertake. I don’t know whether ’tis your 
Cambridge philosophy, or time, that has altered your ways of 
thinking,” Lady Castlewood continued, still in a sarcastic tone. 
“ Perhaps you too have learned to love drink, and to hiccup over 
your wine or punch ; — which is your worship’s favourite liquor ? 
Perhaps you too put up at the ‘ Rose ’ on your way to London, 
and have your acquaintances in Covent Garden. My services 
to you, sir, to principal and ambassador, to master and — and 
lacquey.” 

“ Great heavens ! madam,” cried Harry, “ what have I done 
that thus, for a second time, you insult me? Do you wish me 
to blush for what I used to be proud of, that I lived on your 
bounty? Next to doing you a service (which my life would pay 
for), you know that to receive one from you is my highest pleasure. 
What wrong have I done you that you should wound me so, cruel 
woman ? ” 

“ What wrong ! ” she said, looking at Esmond with wild eyes. 
“ Well, none — none that you know of, Harry, or could help. Why 
did you bring back the smallpox,” she added, after a pause, “ from 
Castlewood village? You could not help it, could you? Which 
of us knows whither fate leads us ? But we were all happy, Henry, 
till then.” And Harry went away from this colloquy, thinking 
still that the estrangement between his patron and his beloved 
mistress was remediable, and that each had at heart a strong 
attachment to the other. 

The intimacy between the Lords Mohun and Castlewood ap- 
peared to increase as long as the former remained in the country ‘ 


120 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and my Lord of Castlewood especially seemed never to be happy 
out of his new comrade’s sight. They sported together, they drank, 
they played bowls and tennis : my Lord Castlewood would go for 
three days to Sark, and bring back my Lord Mohun to Castlewood 
— where indeed his Lordship made himself very welcome to all 
persons, having a joke or a new game at romps for the children, 
all the talk of the town for my Lord, and music and gallantry 
and plenty of the bean langage for my Lady, and for Harry 
Esmond, who was never tired of hearing his stories of his cam- 
paigns and his life at Vienna, Venice, Paris, and the famous cities 
of Europe which he had visited both in peace and war. And he 
sang at my Lady’s harpsichord, and played cards or backgammon, 
or his new game of billiards with my Lord (of whom he invariably 
got the better) ; always having a consummate good-humour, and 
bearing himself with a certain manly grace, that might exhibit 
somewhat of the camp and Alsatia perhaps, but that had its charm, 
and stamped him a gentleman : and his manner to Lady Castle- 
wood was so devoted and respectful, that she soon recovered from 
the first feelings of dislike which she had conceived against him — 
nay, before long, began to be interested in his spiritual welfare, and 
hopeful of his conversion, lending him books of piety, which he 
promised dutifully to study. With her my Lord talked of reform, 
of settling into quiet life, quitting the court and town, and buying 
some land in the neighbourhood — though it must be owned that, 
when the two Lords were together over their burgundy after 
dinner, their talk was very different, and there was very little 
question of conversion on my Lord Mohun’s part. When they got 
to their second bottle, Harry Esmond used commonly to leave these 
two noble topers, who, though they talked freely enough. Heaven 
knows, in his presence (Good Lord, what a set of stories, of Alsatia 
and Spring Garden, of the taverns and gaming-houses, of the ladies 
of the Court, and mesdames of the theatres, he can recall out of 
their godly conversation !)— although, I say, they talked before 
Esmond freely, yet they seemed pleased when he went away, and 
then tliey had another bottle, and then they fell to cards, and then 
my Lord Mohun came to her Ladyship’s drawing-room ; leaving 
his boon companion to sleep off his wine. 

’Twas a point of honour with the fine gentlemen of those days 
to lose or win magnificently at their horse-matches, or games of 
cards and dice — and you could never tell, from the demeanour of 
these two lords afterwards, which had been successful and which the 
loser at their games. And when my Lady hinted to my Lord that 
he played more than she liked, he dismissed her with a “pish,” 
and swore that nothing was more equal than play betwixt gentlemen. 


BEATRIX 


121 


if they did but keep it up long enough. And these kept it up long 
enough, you may be sure. A man of fashion of that time often 
jiassed a quarter of his day at cards, and another quarter at drink : 
I have known many a pretty fellow, who was a wit, too, ready of 
repartee, and possessed of a thousand graces, who would be puzzled 
if he had to write more than his name. 

There is scarce any thoughtful man or woman, I suppose, but 
can look back upon his course of past life, and remember some point, 
trifling as it may have seemed at the time of occurrence, which has 
nevertheless turned and altered his whole career. ’Tis with almost 
all of us, as in M. Massillon’s magnificent image regarding King 
William, a grain de sable that perverts or perhaps overthrows us ; 
and so it was but a light word flung in the air, a mere freak of 
perverse child’s temper, that brought down a whole heap of crushing 
woes upon that family whereof Harry Esmond formed a part. 

Coming home to his dear Castlewood in the third year of his 
academical course (wherein he had now obtained some distinction, 
his Latin poem on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Princess 
Anne of Denmark’s son, having gained him a medal, and introduced 
him to the society of the University wits), Esmond found his little 
friend and pupil Beatrix grown to be taller than her mother, a slim 
and lovely young girl, with cheeks mantling with health and roses : 
with eyes like stars shining out of azure, with waving bronze hair 
clustered about the fairest young forehead ever seen : and a mien 
and shape haughty and beautiful, such as that of the famous antique 
statue of the huntress Diana — at one time haughty, rapid, imperious, 
with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and 
wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to 
Artemis with the 'ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the 
children of Niobe ; at another time she was coy and melting as 
Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this 
lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her 
full splendour : but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman of 
the University, his head full of poetical fancies, his heart perhaps 
throbbing with desires undefined, admired this rising young divinity ; 
and gazed at her (though only as at some “ bright particular star,” 
far above his earth) with endless delight and wonder. She had 
been a coquette from the earliest times almost, trying her freaks 
and jealousies, her wayward frolics and winning caresses, upon all 
that came within her reach ; she set her women quarrelling in the 
nursery, and practised her eyes on the groom as she rode behind him 
on the pillion. 

She was the darling and torment of father and mother. She 
intrigued with each secretly ; and bestowed her fondness and with- 


122 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


drew it, plied them with tears, smiles, kisses, cajolements ; — when 
the mother was angry, as happened often, flew to the father, and 
sheltering behind him, pursued her victim ; when both were dis- 
pleased, transferred her caresses to the domestics, or watched until 
she could win back her parents’ good graces, either by surprising 
them into laughter and good-humour, or appeasing them by sub- 
mission and artful humility. She was scbvo Iceta negotio^ like 
that fickle goddess Horace describes, and of whose “ malicious joy ” 
a great poet of our own has written so nobly — who, famous and 
heroic as he was, was not strong enough to resist the torture of 
women. 

It was but three years before that the child, then but ten years 
old, had nearly managed to make a quarrel between Harry Esmond 
and his comrade, good-natured, phlegmatic Thomas Tusher, who 
never of his own seeking quarrelled Avith anybody : by quoting to 
the latter some silly joke which Harry had made regarding him — 
(it was the merest idlest jest, though it near drove two old friends 
to blows, and I think such a battle would have pleased her) — and 
from that day Tom kept at a distance from her ; and she respected 
him, and coaxed him sedulously whenever they met. But Harry 
was much more easily appeased, because he was fonder of the child; 
and when she made mischief, used cutting speeches, or caused her 
friends pain, she excused herself for her fault not by admitting and 
deploring it, but by pleading not guilty, and asserting innocence so 
constantly and with such seeming artlessness, tliat it was impossible 
to question her plea. In her childhood, they were but mischiefs 
then which she did ; but her power became more fatal as she grew 
older — as a kitten first plays with a ball, and then pounces on a 
bird and kills it. ’Tis not to be imagined that Hany Esmond had 
all this experience at this early stage of his life, whereof he is now 
writing the history — many things here noted were but known 
to him in later days. Almost everything Beatrix did or undid 
seemed good, or at least pardonable, to him then, and years after- 
wards. 

It happened, then, that Harry Esmond came home to Castle- 
wood for his last vacation, with good hopes of a fellowship at his 
College, and a contented resolve to advance his fortune that way. 
’Twas in the first year of the present century, Mr. Esmond (as far 
as he knew the period of his birth) being then twenty-two years old. 
He found his quondam pupil shot up into this beauty of which we 
liave spoken, and promising yet more : her brother, my Lord’s son, 
a handsome, high-spirited, brave lad, generous and frank, and kind 
to everybody, save perhaps his sister, with whom Frank was at war 
(and not from his but her fault) — adoring his mother, Avhose joy he 


OUR SERVANTS AND OURSELVES 


128 


was : and taking her side in the unhappy matrimonial differences 
which were now permanent, while of course Mistress Beatrix ranged 
with her father. When heads of families fall out, it must naturally 
be that their dependants wear the one or the other party’s colour ; 
and even in the parliaments in the servants’ hall or the stables, 
Harry, who had an early observant turn, could see which were my 
Lord’s adherents and which my Lady’s, and conjecture pretty 
shrewdly how their unlucky quarrel was debated. Our lacqueys sit 
in judgment on us. My Lord’s intrigues may be ever so stealthily 
conducted, but his valet knows them ; and my Lady’s woman carries 
her mistress’s private history to the servants’ scandal-market, and 
exchanges it against the secrets of other abigails. 


CHAPTER XIII 

MY LORD LEAVES US AND HIS EVIL BEHIND HIM 

M y Lord Mohun (of whose exploits and fame some of the 
gentlemen of the University had brought down but ugly 
reports) was once more a guest at Castlewood, and seemingly 
more intimately allied with my Lord even than before. Once in 
the spring those two noblemen had ridden to Cambridge from 
Newmarket, whither they had gone for the horse-racing, and had 
honoured Harry Esmond with a visit at his rooms ; after which 
Doctor Montague, the Master of the College, who had treated 
Harry somewhat haughtily, seeing his familiarity with these great 
folks, and that my Lord Castlewood laughed and walked with his 
hand on Harry’s shoulder, relented to Mr. Esmond, and con- 
descended to be very civil to him ; and some days after his 
arrival, Harry, laughing, told this story to Lady Esmond, remark- 
ing how strange it was that men famous for learning and renowned 
over Europe, should, nevertheless, so bow down to a title, and 
cringe to a nobleman ever so poor. At this Mistress Beatrix 
flung up her head, and said it became those of low origin to respect 
their betters ; that the parsons made themselves a great deal too 
proud, she thought; and that slie liked the way at Lady Sark’s 
best, where the chaplain, though he loved pudding, as all parsons 
do, always went away before the custard. 

“ And when I am a parson,” says Mr. Esmond, “ will you give 
me no custard, Beatrix ? ” 

“You — ^you are different,” Beatrix answered. “You are of 
our blood.” 

“ My father was a parson, as you call him,” said my Lady. 

“ But mine is a peer of Ireland,” says Mistress Beatrix, tossing 
her head. “Let people know their places. I suppose you will 
have me go down on my knees and ask a blessing of Mr. Thomas 
Tusher, that has just been made a curate, and whose mother was 
a waiting-maid.” 

And she tossed out of the room, being in one of her flighty 
humours then. 

When she was gone, my Lady looked so sad and grave, that 


MY LORD IS IN DANGER 


125 


Harry asked the cause of her disquietude. She said it was not 
merely what he said of Newmarket, but what she had remarked, 
with great anxiety and terror, that my Lord, ever since his 
acquaintance with the Lord Mohun especially, had recurred to his 
fondness for play, which he had renounced since his marriage. 

“ But men promise more than they are able to perform in 
marriage,” said my Lady with a sigh. “ I fear he has lost large 
sums ; and our property, always small, is dwindling away under 
this reckless dissipation. I heard of him in London with very wild 
company. Since his return letters and lawyers are constantly 
coming and going : he seems to me to have a constant anxiety, 
though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter. I looked 
through — through the door last night, and — and before,” said my 
Lady, “ and saw them at cards after midnight ; no estate will bear 
that extravagance, much less ours, which will be so diminished that 
my son will have nothing at all, and my poor Beatrix no portion ! ” 

“ I wish I could help you, madam,” said Harry Esmond, sigh- 
ing, and wishing that unavailingly, and for the thousandth time 
in his life. 

“Who can? Only God,” said Lady Esmond — “only God, in 
whose hands we are.” And so it is, and for his rule over his 
family, and for his conduct to wife and children — subjects over 
whom his power is monarchical — any one who watches the world 
must think with trembling sometimes of the account wliich many 
a man will have to render. For in our society there’s no law 
to control the King of the Fireside. He is master of property, 
happiness — life almost. He is free to punish, to make happy or 
unhappy — to ruin or to torture. He may kill a wife gradually, 
and be no more questioned than the Grand Seignior who drowns 
a slave at midnight. He may make slaves and hypocrites of his 
children ; or friends and freemen ; or drive them into revolt and 
enmity against the natural law of love. I have heard politicians 
and coffee-house wiseacres talking over the newspaper, and railing 
at the tyranny of the French King, and the Emperor, and wondered 
how these (who are monarchs, too, in their way) govern their own 
dominions at home, where each man rules absolute. When the 
annals of each little reign are shown to the Supreme Master, under 
whom we hold sovereignty, histories will be laid bare of household 
tyrants as cruel as Amurath, and as savage as Nero, and as reckless 
and dissolute as Charles. 

If Harry Esmond’s patron erred, ’twas in the latter way, 
from a disposition rather self-indulgent than cruel ; and he might 
liave been brought back to much better feelings, had time been 
given to him to bring his repentance to a lasting reform. 


12() THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


As my Lord and his friend Lord Mohun were such close com- 
panions, Mistress Beatrix cliose to be jealous of the latter ; and the 
two gentlemen often entertained each other by laughing, in their 
rude boisterous way, at the child’s freaks of anger and show of 
dislike. “When thou art old enough, thou shalt marry Lord 
Mohun,” Beatrix’s father would say : on which the girl would 
pout and say, “ I would rather marry Tom Tusher.” And because 
the Lord Mohun always showed an extreme gallantry to my Lady 
Castlewood, whom he professed to admire devotedly, one day, in 
answer to this old joke of her father’s, Beatrix said, “ I think my 
Lord would rather marry mamma than marry me ; and is waiting 
till you die to ask her.” 

The words were said lightly and pertly by the girl one night 
before supper, as the family party were assembled near the great 
fire. The two lords, who were at cards, both gave a start; my 
Lady turned as red as scarlet, and bade Mistress Beatrix go to her 
own chamber ; whereupon the girl, putting on, as her wont was, 
the most innocent air, said, “ I am sure I meant no wrong ; I am 
sure mamma talks a great deal more to Harry Esmond than she 
does to papa — and she cried when Harry went away, and she 
never does when papa goes away ! And last night she talked to 
Lord Mohun for ever so long, and sent us out of the room, and 
cried when we came back, and ” 

“ D n ! ” cried out my Lord Castlewood, out of all patience. 

“ Co out of the room, you little viper ! ” and he started up and 
flung down his cards. 

“ Ask Lord Mohun what I said to him, Francis,” her Ladyship 
said, rising up with a scared face, but yet with a great and touching 
dignity and candour in her look and voice. “ Come away with me, 
Beatrix.” Beatrix sprang up too ; she was in tears now. 

“Dearest mamma, what have I donel” she asked. “Sure 
I meant no harm.” And she clung to her mother, and the pair 
went out sobbing together. 

“ I will tell you what your wife said to me, Frank,” my Lord 
Mohun cried. “ Parson Harry may hear it ; and, as I hope for 
heaven, every word I say is true. Last night, with tears in her 
eyes, your wife implored me to play no more with you at dice or 
at cards, and you know best whether what she asked was not for 
your good.” 

“ Of course it was, Mohun,” says my Lord in a dry hard voice. 
“ Of course you are a model of a man : and the world knows what 
a saint you are.” 

My Lord Mohun was separated from his wife, and had had many 
affairs of honour ; of which women as usual had been the cause. 


127 


A QUARREL 

“I am no saint, though your wife is— and I can answer foi 
my actions as other people must for their words,” said my Lord 
Mohun. 

“ By G — , my Lord, you shall,” cried the other, starting up. 

“We have another little account to settle first, niy Lord,” says 
Lord Mohun. Whereupon Harry Esmond, filled with alarm for 
the consequences to which this disastrous dispute might lead, broke 
out into the most vehement expostulations with his patron and his 
adversary. “ Gracious heavens ! ” he said, “ my Lord, are you 
going to draw a sword upon your friend in your own house 1 Can 
you doubt the honour of a lady who is as pure as heaven, and 
would die a thousand times rather than do you a wrong? Are 
the idle words of a jealous child to set friends at variance? Has 
not my mistress, as much as she dared do, besought your Lordship, 
as the truth must be told, to break your intimacy with my Lord 
Mohun ; and to give up the habit which may bring ruin on your 
family ? But for my Lord Mohun’s illness, had he not left you ? ” 

“ ’Faith, Frank, a man with a gouty toe can’t run after other 
men’s wives,” broke out my Lord Mohun, who indeed was in that 
way, and with a laugh and a look at his swathed limb so frank 
and comical, that the other, dashing his fist across his forehead, 
was caught by that infectious good-humour, and said with his oath, 

“ D it, Harry, I believe thee,” and so this quarrel was over, 

and the two gentlemen, at swords drawn but just now, dropped 
their points, and shook hands. 

Beati paci/ici. “ Go bring my Lady back,” said Harry’s 
patron. Esmond went away only too glad to be the bearer of such 
good news. He found her at the door ; she had been listening 
there, but went back as he came. She took both his hands ; hers 
were marble cold. She seemed as if she would fall on his shoulder. 
“ Thank you, and God bless you, my dear brother Harry,” she said. 
She kissed his hand, Esmond felt her tears upon it : and leading 
her into the room, and up to my Lord, the Lord Castlewood, with 
an outbreak of feeling and affection such as he had not exhibited 
for many a long day, took his wife to his heart, and bent over 
and kissed her and asked her pardon. 

“’Tis time for me to go to roost. I will have my gruel a-bed,” 
said my Lord Mohun : and limped off comically on Harry Esmond’s 
arm. “ By George, that woman is a pearl ! ” he said ; “ and ’tis 
only a pig that wouldn’t value her. Have you seen the vulgar, 
trapesing orange-girl whom Esmond ” — but here Mr. Esmond inter- 
rupted him, saying, that these were not affairs for him to know. 

My Lord’s gentleman came in to wait upon his master, who 
was no sooner in his niglitcap and dressing-gown than he had 


128 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

another visitor whom his host insisted on sending to him : and this 
was no other than the Lady Gas tie wood herself witli the toast and 
gruel, which her husband bade her make and carry with her own 
hands in to her guest. 

Lord Castlewood stood looking after his wife as she went on 
this errand, and as he looked, Harry Esmond could not but gaze on 
him, and remarked in his patron’s face an expression of love, and 
grief, and care, which very much moved and touched the young 
man. Lord Castlewood’s hands fell down at his sides, and his head 
on his breast, and presently he said — 

“ You heard what Mohim said. Parson ? ” 

“ That my Lady was a saint 1 ” 

“That there are two accounts to settle. I have been going 
wrong these five years, Harry Esmond. Ever since you brought 
that damned smallpox into the house, there has been a fate pur- 
suing me, and I had best have died of it, and not run away from it 
like a coward. I left Beatrix with her relations, and went to 
London ; and I fell among thieves, Harry, and I got back to con- 
founded cards and dice, which I hadn’t touched since my marriage 
— no, not since I was in the Duke’s Guard, with those wild Mohocks. 
And I have been playing worse and worse, and going deeper and 
deeper into it ; and I owe Mohun two thousand pounds now ; and 
when it’s paid I am little better than a beggar. I don’t like to 
look my boy in the face : he hates me, I know he does. And I 
have spent Beaty’s little portion : and the Lord knows what will 
come if I live. The best thing I can do is to die, and release what 
portion of the estate is redeemable for the boy.” 

Mohun was as much master at Castlewood as the owner of the 
Hall itself ; and his equipages filled the stables, where, indeed, there 
was room in plenty for many more horses than Harry Esmond’s 
impoverished patron could afford to keep. He had arrived on 
horseback with his people ; but when his gout broke out my Lord 
Mohun sent to London for a light chaise he had, drawn by a pair 
of small horses, and running as swift, wherever roads were good, as 
a Laplander’s sledge. When this carriage came, his Lordship was 
eager to drive the Lady Castlewood abroad in it, and did so many 
times, and at a rapid pace, greatly to his companion’s enjoyment, 
who loved the swift motion and the healthy breezes over the downs 
which lie hard upon Castlewood, and stretch thence towards the 
sea. As this amusement was very pleasant to her, and her lord, 
far from showing any mistrust of her intimacy with Lord Mohun, 
encouraged her to be his companion — as if willing by his present 
extreme confidence to make up for any past mistrust which his 
jealousy had shown — the Lady Castlewood enjoyed herself freely in 


TIMETE JJANAOS ET DONA FERENTES 129 

this harmless diversion, which, it must be owned, her guest was 
very eager to give her ; and it seemed that she grew the more free 
with Lord Moliun, and joleased with his company, because of some 
sacrifice which his gallantry was pleased to make in her favour. 

Seeing the two gentlemen constantly at cards still of evenings, 
Harry Esmond one day deplored to his mistress that this fatal 
infatuation of her lord should continue ^ and now they seemed recon- 
ciled together, begged his lady to hint to her husband that he 
should play no more. 

But Lady Castlewood, smiling archly and gaily, said she would 
speak to him presently, and that, for a few nights more at least, he 
might be let to have his amusement. 

“ Indeed, madam,” said Harry, “ you know not what it costs 
you ; and ’tis easy for any observer who knows the game, to see 
that Lord Mohun is by far the stronger of the two.” 

“ I know he is,” says my Lady, still with exceeding good- 
humour; “he is not only the best player, but the kindest player 
in the world.” 

“ Madam, madam ! ” Esmond cried, transported and provoked. 
“ Debts of honour must be paid some time or other ; and my master 
will be ruined if he goes on.” 

“Harry, shall I tell you a secret 1” my Lady replied, with 
kindness and pleasure still in her eyes. “Francis will not be 
ruined if he goes on ; he will be rescued if he goes on. I repent 
of having spoken or thought unkindly of the Lord Mohun when he 
was here in the past year. He is full of much kindness and good ; 
and ’tis my belief that we shall bring him to better things. I have 
lent him Tillotson and your favourite Bishop Taylor, and he is 
much touched, he says ; and as a proof of his repentance— (and 
herein lies my secret) — what do you think he is doing with Francis 1 
He is letting poor Frank win his money back again. He hath won 
already at the last four nights ; and my Lord Mohun says that he 
will not be the means of injuring poor Frank and my dear children.” 

“ And in God’s name, what do you return him for the sacrifice ? ” 
asked Esmond, aghast ; who knew enough of men, and of this one 
in particular, to be aware that sucli a finished rake gave nothing for 
nothing. “ How, in Heaven’s name, are you to pay him'?” 

“ Pay him ! With a mother’s blessing and a wife’s prayers ! ” 
cries my Lady, clasping her hands together. Harry Esmond did 
not know whether to laugh, to be angry, or to love his dear mistress 
more than ever for the obstinate innocency with which she chose to 
regard the conduct of a man of the world, whose designs he knew 
better how to interpret. He told the lady, guardedly, but so as to 
make his meaning quite clear to lier, what he knew in respect of the 
7 I 


130 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


former life and conduct of this nobleman ; of other women against 
whom he had plotted, and whom he had overcome ; of the conver- 
sation which he, Harry himself, had had with Lord Mohiin, wherein 
the lord made a boast of his libertinism, and frequently avowed that 
he held all women to be fair game (as his Lordship styled this pretty 
sport), and that they were all, without exception, to be won. And 
the return Harry had for his entreaties and remonstrances was a fit 
of anger on Lady Castlewood’s part, who would not listen to his 
accusations ; she said and retorted that he himself must be very 
wicked and perverted to suppose evil designs where she was sure 
none were meant. “ And this is the good meddlers get of inter- 
fering,” Harry thought to himself with much bitterness ; and his 
perplexity and annoyance were only the greater, because he couhl 
not speak to my Lord Castle wood himself upon a subject of this 
nature, or venture to advise or warn him regarding a matter so very 
sacred as his own honour, of which my Lord was naturally the 
best guardian. 

But though Lady Castlewood would listen to no advice from her 
young dependant, and appeared indignantly to refuse it when offered, 
Harry had the satisfaction to find that she adopted the counsel 
which she professed to reject ; for the next day she pleaded a head- 
ache, when my Lord Mohun would have had her drive out, and the 
next day the headache continued : and next day, in a laughing gay 
way, she proposed that the children should take her place in his 
Lordship’s car, for they would be charmed with a ride of all things ; 
and she must not have all the pleasure for herself. My Lord gave 
them a drive with a very good grace, though, I dare say, with rage 
and disappointment inwardly — not that his heart was very seriously 
engaged in his designs upon this simple lady : but the life of such 
men is often one of intrigue, and they can no more go through the 
day without a woman to pursue, than a fox-hunter without his sport 
after breakfast. 

Under an affected carelessness of demeanour, and though there 
was no outward demonstration of doubt upon his patron’s part since 
the quarrel between the two lords, Harry yet saw that Lord Castle- 
wood was watching his guest very narrowly ; and caught sight of 
distrust and smothered rage (as Harry thought) which foreboded no 
good. On the point of honour Esmond knew how touchy his patron 
was ; and watched him almost as a physician watches a patient, and 
it seemed to him that this one was slow to take the disease, though 
he could not throw off the poison when once it had mingled with 
his blood. We read in Shakspeare (whom the writer for his part 
considers to be far beyond Mr. Congreve, Mr. Dryden, or any of the 
wits of the present period), that when jealousy is once declared, nor 


MY LORD MOHUN’S GOUT 131 

poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, will 
ever soothe it or medicine it away. 

In fine, the symptoms seemed to be so alarming to this young 
physician (who, indeed, young as he was, had felt the kind pulses 
of all those dear kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty 
to warn my Lord Mohun, and let him know that his designs were 
suspected and watched. So one day, when in rather a pettish 
humour his Lordship had sent to Lady Castlewood, who had pro- 
mised to drive with him, and now refiised to come, Harry said, 
“ My Lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side I will 
thank you ; I have much to say to you, and would like to speak to 
you alone.” 

“You honour me by giving me your confidence, Mr. Henry 
Esmond,” says the other, with a very grand bow. My Lord was 
always a fine gentleman, and young as he was there was that in 
Esmond’s manner which showed that he was a gentleman too, and 
that none might take a liberty with him — so the pair went out, and 
mounted the little carriage, which was in waiting for them in the 
court, with its two little cream-coloured Hanoverian horses covered 
with splendid furniture and champing at the bit. 

“ My Lord,” says Harry Esmond, after they were got into the 
country, and pointing to my Lord MohuiTs foot, which was swathed 
in fiannel, and put up rather ostentatiously on a cushion — “my 
Lord, I studied medicine at Cambridge.” 

“ Indeed, Parson Harry,” says he ; “ and are you going to take 
out a diploma : and cure your fellow-students of the ” 

“ Of the gout,” says Harry, interrupting him, and looking him 
hard in the face : “I know a good deal about the gout.” 

“ I hope you may never have it. ’Tis an infernal disease,” says 
my Lord, “ and its twinges are diabolical. Ah ! ” and he made a 
dreadful wry face, as if he just felt a twinge. 

“ Your Lordship would be much better if you took off all that 
flannel — it only serves to inflame the toe,” Harry continued, looking 
his man full in the face. 

“ Oh ! it only serves to inflame the toe, does it ? ” says the 
other, with an innocent air. 

“ If you took off that flannel, and flung that absurd slipper 
away, and wore a boot,” continues Harry. 

“You recommend me boots, Mr. Esmond 1 ” asks my Lord. 

“ Yes, boots and spurs. I saw your Lordship three days ago 
run down the gallery fast enough,” Harry goes on. “ I am sure 
that taking gruel at night is not so pleasant as claret to your Lotd- 
ship; and besides it keeps your Lordship’s head cool for play, 
whilst my patron’s is hot and flustered with drink.” 


132 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“’Sdeatli, sir, you dare not say that I don’t play fair?” cries 
niy Lord, whipping his horses, which went away at a gallop. 

“ You are cool when my Lord is drunk,” Harry continued ; 
“ your Lordship gets the Letter of my patron. I have watched you 
as I looked up from my books.” 

“You young Argus!” says Lord Mohun, who liked Harry 
Esmond — and for whose company and wit, and a certain daring 
manner, Harry had a great liking too — “ You young Argus ! you 
may look with all your hundred eyes and see we play fair. I’ve 
played away an estate of a night, and I’ve played my shirt off my 
back ; and I’ve played away my periwig and gone home in a night- 
cap. But no man can say I ever took an advantage of him beyond 
the advantage of the game. I played a dice-cogging scoundrel in 
Alsatia for his ears and won ’em, and have one of ’em in my lodging 
in Bow Street in a bottle of spirits. Harry Mohun will play any 
man for anything — always would.” 

“You are playing awful stakes, mjj^Lord, in my patron’s house,” 
Harry said, “ and more games than are on the cards.” 

“ What do you mean, sir ? ” cries my Lord, turning round, with 
a flush on his face. 

“ I mean,” answers Harry, in a sarcastic tone, “ that your gout 
is well — if ever you had it.” 

“Sir I ” cried my Lord, getting hot. 

“And to tell the truth, I believe your Lordship has no more 
gout than I have. At any rate, change of air will do you good, 
my Lord Mohun. And I mean fairly that you had better go from 
Castle wood.” 

“ And were you appointed to give me this message ? ” cries the 
Lord Mohun. “ Did Frank Esmond commission you ? ” 

“No one did. ’Twas the honour of my family that com- 
missioned me.” 

“And you are prepared to answer this?” cries the other, 
furiously lashing his horses. 

“ Quite, my Lord : your Lordship will upset the carriage if you 
whip so hotly.” 

“ By George, you have a brave spirit ! ” my Lord cried out, 
bursting into a laugh. “ I suppose ’tis that infernal hotte de Jesuite 
that makes you so bold,” he added. 

“ ’Tis the peace of the family I love best in the world,” Harry 
Esmond said warmly — “ ’tis the honour of a noble benefactor — the 
happiness of my dear mistress and her children. I owe them every- 
thing in life, my Lord ; and would lay it down for any one of them. 
What brings you here to disturb this quiet household? What 
keeps you lingering month after month in the country? What 


A DRIVE 


133 


makes you feign illness and invent pretexts for delay! Is it to 
win my poor patron’s money! Be generous, my Lord, and spare 
his weakness for the sake of his wife and children. Is it to practise 
upon the simple heart of a Aurtuous lady! You might as well 
storm the Tower single-handed. But you may blemish her name 
by light comments on it, or by lawless pursuits — and I don’t deny 
that ’tis in your power to make her unhappy. Spare these inno- 
cent people, and leave them.” 

“ By the Lord, I believe thou hast an eye to the pretty Puritan 
thyself, Master Harry,” says my Lord, with his reckless, good- 
humoured laugh, and as if he had been listening with interest to 
the passionate appeal of the young man. “ Whisper, Harry. Art 
thou in love with her thyself! Hath tipsy Frank Esmond come 
by the way of all flesh ! ” 

“ My Lord, my Lord,” cried Harry, his face flushing and his 
eyes filling as he spoke, “ I never had a mother, but I love this 
lady as one. I worship her as a devotee worships a saint. To 
hear her name spoken lightly seems blasphemy to me. Would you 
dare think of your own mother so, or suffer any one so to speak 
of her ! It is a horror to me to fancy that any man should think 
of her impurely. I implore you, I beseech you, to leave her. 
Danger Avill come out of it.” 

“ Danger, psha ! ” says my Lord, giving a cut to the horses, 
Avhich at this minute — for we were got on to the Downs — fairly 
ran off into a gallop that no pulling could stop. The rein broke 
in Lord Mohim’s hands, and the furious beasts scampered madly 
forwards, the carnage swaying to and fro, and the persons within 
it holding on to the sides as best they might until, seeing a great 
raAune before them, where an upset was inevitable, the tAvo gentle- 
men leapt for their lives, each out of his side of the chaise. Harry 
Esmond was quit for a fall on the grass, which was so severe that 
it stunned him for a minute ; but he got up presently very sick, 
and bleeding at the nose, but AAdth no other hurt. The Lord 
Mohun was not so fortunate ; he fell on his head against a stone, 
and lay on the ground, dead to all appearance. 

This misadventure happened as the gentlemen were on their 
return homewards; and my Lord Castlewood, with his son and 
daughter, who were going out for a ride, met the ponies as they 
were galloping with the car behind, the broken traces entangling 
their heels, and my Lord’s people turned and stopped them. It 
Avas young Frank Avho spied out Lord Mohun’s scarlet coat as he 
lay on the ground, and the party made up to that unfortunate 
gentleman and Esmond, Avho Avas now standing over him. His 
large periwig and feathere(l hat liad fallen off, and he was bleeding 


134 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


profusely from a wound on the forehead, and looking, and being 
indeed, a corpse. 

“ Great God ! he’s dead ! ” says my Lord. “ Ride, some one : 
fetch a doctor — stay. I’ll go home and bring back Tusher; he 
knows surgery,” and my Lord, with his son after him, galloped 
away. 

They were scarce gone when Harry Esmond, who was indeed 
but just come to himself, bethought him of a similar accident which 
he had seen on a ride from Newmarket to Cambridge, and taking 
off a sleeve of my Lord’s coat, Harry, with a penknife, opened a 
vein in his arm, and was greatly relieved, after a moment, to see 
the blood flow. He was near half-an-hour before he came to him- 
self, by which time Doctor Tusher and little Frank arrived, and 
found my Lord not a corpse indeed, but as pale as one. 

After a time, when he was able to bear motion, they put my 
Lord upon a groom’s horse, and gave the other to Esmond, the men 
walking on each side of my Lord, to support him, if need were, and 
worthy Doctor Tusher with them. Little Frank and Harry rode 
together at a. foot pace. 

When we rode together home, the boy said : “We met mamma, 
who was walking on the terrace with the Doctor, and papa 
frightened her, and told her you were dead ” 

“ That I was dead ? ” asks Harry. 

“Yes. Papa says: ‘Here’s poor Harry killed, my dear;’ on 
whicli mamma gives a great scream ; and oh, Harry ! she drops 
down ; and I thought she was dead too. And you never saw 
such a way as papa was in : he swore one of his great oaths : 
and he turned quite pale ; and then he began to laugh some- 
how, and he told the Doctor to take his horse, and me to follow 
him ; and we left him. And I looked back, and saw him 
dashing water out of the fountain on to mamma. Oh, she was 
so frightened ! 

Musing upon this curious history — for my Lord Mohun’s name 
was Henry too, and they called each other Frank and Harry often 
— and not a little disturbed and anxious, Esmond rode home. His 
dear lady was on the terrace still, one of her women with her, and 
my Lord no longer there. There are steps and a little door thence 
down into the road. My Lord passed, looking very ghastly, with 
a handkerchief over his head, and without his hat and periwig, 
which a groom carried ; but his politeness did not desert him, and 
lie made a bow to the lady above. 

“ Thank Heaven, you are safe ! ” she said. 

“ And so is Harry too, mamma,” says little Frank, — 
“ huzzay ! ” 


LADY CASTLEWOOD’S GREETING 


35 


Harry Esmond got off the horse to rim to his mistress, as did 
little Frank, and one of the grooms took charge of the two beasts, 
while the other, hat and periwig in hand, walked by my Lord’s 
bridle to the front gate, which lay half-a-mile away. 

“ Oh my boy ! wdiat a fright you have given me ! ” Lady 
Castlewood said, when Harry Esmond came up, greeting him with 
one of lier shining looks, and a voice of tender welcome ; and she 
w^as so kind as to kiss the young man (’twas the second time she 
had so honoured him), and she walked into the house between him 
and her son, holding a hand of each. 


CHAPTER XIV 


IVE RIDE AFTER HIM TO LONDON 

A FTER a repose of a couple of days, the Lord Mohuii was so 
/A far recovered of his hurt as to be able to announce his de- 
^ ^ parture for the next morning; when, accordingly, he took 

leave of Castlewood, proposing to ride to London by easy stages, 
and lie two nights upon the road. His host treated him with a 
studied and ceremonious courtesy, certainly different from my Lord’s 
usual frank and careless demeanour; but there was no reason to 
suppose that the two lords parted otherwise than good friends, 
though Harry Esmond remarked that my Lord Viscount only saw 
his guest in company with other persons, and seemed to avoid being 
alone with him. Nor did he ride any distance with Lord Mohun, 
as his custom was with most of his friends, whom he was always 
eager to welcome and unwilling to lose ; but contented himself, 
when his Lordship’s horses were announced, and their owner ap- 
peared, booted for his journey, to take a courteous leave of the 
ladies of Castlewood, by following the Lord Mohun downstairs to 
his horses, and by bowing and wishing him a good-day in the 
courtyard. “ I shall see you in London before very long, Mohun,” 
my Lord said, with a smile ; “ when we will settle our accounts 
together.” 

“Do not let them trouble you, Frank,” said the other good- 
naturedly, and holding out his hand, looked rather surprised at the 
grim and stately manner in which his host received his parting 
salutation ; and so, followed by his people, he rode away. 

Harry Esmond was witness of the departure. It was very 
different to my Lord’s coming, for which great preparation had been 
made (the old house putting on its best appearance to welcome its 
guest), and there was a sadness and constraint about all persons 
that day, which filled Mr. Esmond with gloomy forebodings, and 
sad indefinite apprehensions. Lord Castlewood stood at the door 
watching his guest and his people as they went out under the arch of 
the outer gate. When he was there, Lord Mohun turned once more ; 
my Lord Viscount slowly raised his beaver and boAved. His face 
wore a peculiar livid look, Harry thought. He cursed and kicked 


LADY CASTLEWOOD’S ANXIETY 


137 


away liis dogs, which came jumping jihout him — then he walked 
up to the fountain in the centre of the court, and leaned against a 
pillar and looked into the basin. As Esmond crossed over to his 
own room, late the chaplain’s, on the other side of the court, and 
turned to enter in at the low door, he saw Lady Castlewood looking 
through the curtains of the great window of the drawing-room over- 
head, at my Lord as he stood regarding the fountain. There was 
in the court a peculiar silence somehow ; and the scene remained 
long in Esmond’s memory : — the sky bright overhead ; the buttresses 
of the building and the sundial casting shadow over the gilt memento 
mori inscribed underneath ; the two dogs, a black greyhound and 
a spaniel nearly white, the one with his face up to the sun, and 
the other snuffing amongst the grass and stones, and my Lord 
leaning over the fountain, which was bubbling audibly. ’Tis strange 
how that scene, and the sound of that fountain, remain fixed on 
the memory of a man who has beheld a hundred sights of splendour, 
and danger too, of which he has kept no account. 

It was Lady Castlewood — she had been laughing all the morning, 
and especially gay and lively before her husband and his guest- — 
who as soon as the two gentlemen went together from her room, 
ran to Harry, the expression of her countenance quite changed now, 
and with a face and eyes full of care, and said, “ Follow them, 
Harry, I am sure something has gone wrong.” And so it was that 
Esmond was made an eavesdropper at this lady’s orders : and retired 
to his own chamber, to give himself time in truth to try and compose 
a story which would soothe his mistress, for he could not but have 
his own apprehension that some serious quarrel was pending between 
the two gentlemen. 

And now for several days the little company at Castlewood 
sat at table as of evenings : this care, though unnamed and invisible, 
being nevertheless present alway, in the minds of at least three 
persons there. My Lord was exceeding gentle and kind. When- 
ever he quitted the room, his wife’s eyes followed him. He behaved 
to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable 
in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He called 
her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and 
gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did 
not love, and being lax about church generally, he went thither 
and performed all the offices (down even to listening to Doctor 
T usher’s sermon) with great devotion. 

“ He paces his room all night : what is it 1 Henry, find out 
what it is,” Lady Castlewood said constantly to her young dependant. 
“ He has sent three letters to London,” she said, another day. 

“Indeed, madam, they were to a lawyer,” Harry answered, 


138 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


who knew of these letters, and had seen a i)art of the correspond- 
ence, which related to a new loan iriy Lord was raisint^ ; and when 
the yonng man remonstrated with his ])atron, my Lord said he 
“ was only raising money to pay off’ an old debt on the property, 
which must be discharged.” 

Regarding the money. Lady Castlewood was not in the least 
anxious. Few fond women feel money-distressed ; indeed you can 
hardly give a woman a greater pleasure than to bid her pawn her 
diamonds for the man she loves ; and I remember hearing Mr. 
Congreve say of my Lord Marlborough, that the reason why my 
Lord was so successful with women as a young man, was because 
he took money of them. “There are few men who will make 
such a sacrifice for them,” says Mr. Congreve, who knew a part 
of the sex pretty well. 

Harry Esmond’s vacation was just over, and, as hath been said, 
he was preparing to return to the University for his last term 
before taking his degree and entering into the Church. He had 
made up his mind for this office, not indeed with that reverence 
which becomes a man about to enter upon a duty so holy, but 
with a worldly spirit of acquiescence in tlie prudence of adopting 
that profession for his calling. But his reasoning was that he 
owed all to the family of Castlewood, and loved better to be near 
them than anywhere else in the world ; that he might be useful 
to his benefactors, who had the utmost confidence in him and affec- 
tion for him in return ; that he might aid in bringing up the young 
heir of the house and acting as his governor ; that he might con- 
tinue to be his dear patron’s and mistress’s friend and adviser, who 
both were pleased to say that they should ever look upon him as 
such ; and so, by making himself useful to those he loved best, he 
proposed to console himself for giving up any schemes of ambi- 
tion which he might have had in his own bosom. Indeed, his 
mistress had told him that she would not have him leave her ; and 
whatever she commanded was will to him. 

The Lady Castlewood’s mind was greatly relieved in the last 
few days of this well-remembered holiday time, by my Lord’s 
announcing one morning, after the post had brought him letters 
from London, in a careless tone, that the Lord Mohun was gone 
to Paris, and was about to make a great journey in Europe ; and 
though Lord Castlewood’s own gloom did not wear off’, or his 
behaviour alter, yet this cause of anxiety being removed from his 
lady’s mind, she began to be more hopeful and easy in her spirits, 
striving too, with all her heart, and by all the means of soothing 
in her power, to call back my Lord’s cheerfulness and dissipate 
his moody humour. 


WE RIDE TO LONDON 139 

He aceouiited for it himself, by saying that he was out of 
liealtli ; tliat he wanted to see his physician ; that he woidd go 
to London, and (consult Dr. Cheyne. It was agreed that his 
Lordship and Hariy Esmond should make the journey as far as 
London together; and of a Monday morning, the 11th of October, 
in the year 1700, they set forwards towards London on horseback. 
The day before being Sunday, and the rain pouring down, the 
family did not visit church ; and at night my Lord read the service 
to his family very finely, and with a peculiar sweetness and gravity 
— speaking the parting benediction, Harry tliought, as solemn as 
ever he heard it. And he kissed and embraced his wife and 
children before they went to their own chambers with more fond- 
ness than he was ordinarily wont to show, and with a solejnnity 
and feeling of which they thought in after days with no small 
comfort. 

They took horse the next morning (after adieux from the family 
as tender as on the night previous), lay that night on the road, 
and entered London at nightfall ; my Lord going to the “ Trumpet,” 
in the Cockpit, Whitehall, a house used by the military in his time 
as a young man, and accustomed by his Lordsliip ever since. 

An hour after my Lord’s arrival (which showed that his visit 
had been arranged beforehand), my Lord’s man of business arrived 
from Gray’s Inn ; and thinking that his patron might wish to be 
private with the lawyer, Esmond was for leaving them : but my 
Lord said his business was short ; introduced Mr. Esmond particu- 
larly to the lawyer, who had been engaged for the family in the old 
lord’s time ; who said that he had paid the money, as desired that 
day, to my Lord Mohun himself, at his lodgings in Bow Street ; 
that his Lordship had expressed some surprise, as it was not 
customary to employ lawyers, he said, in such transactions between 
men of honour ; but, nevertheless, he had returned my Lonl Vis- 
count’s note of hand, which he held at his client’s disposition. 

“ I thought the Lord Mohun had been in Paris ? ” cried Mr. 
Esmond, in great alarm and astonishment. 

“ He is come back at my invitation,” said my Lord Viscount. 
“We have accounts to settle together.” 

“ I pray Heaven they are over, sir,” says Esmond. 

“ Oh, quite,” replied the other, looking hard at the young man. 
“ He was rather troublesome about that money which I told you I 
had lost to him at play. And now ’tis paid, and we are quits 
on that score, and we shall meet good friends again.” 

“ My Lord,” cried out Esmond, “ I am sure you are deceiving 
me, and that there is a quarrel between the Lord Mohun and you.” 

“ Quarrel— pish ! We shall sup together this very night, and 


140 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


drink a bottle. Every man is ill-humoured who loses such a sum 
as I have lost. But now Tis paid, and iny anger is gone with it.” 

“ Where shall we sup, sir ? ” says Harry. 

• fFe/ Let some gentlemen wait till they are asked,” says my 
Lord Viscount, with a laugh. “ You go to Duke Street, and see 
Mr. Betterton. You love the play, I know. Leave me to follow 
my own devices : and in the morning we’ll breakfast together, with 
what appetite we may, as the play says.” 

“By Gr — ! my Lord, I will not leave you this night,” says 
Harry Esmond. “ I think I know the cause of your dispute. I 
swear to you ’tis nothing. On the very day the accident befell 
Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him about it. I know that nothing 
has passed but idle gallantry on his part.” 

“ You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between 
Lord Mohun and my wife,” says my Lord, in a thundering voice — 
“ you knew of this and did not tell me 1 ” 

“ I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir — a 
thousand times more. How was she, who was as innocent as a 
child, to know what was the meaning of the covert addresses of a 
villain ] ” 

“ A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife 
away from me.” 

“ Sir, she is as pure as an angel,” cried young Esmond 

“ Have I said a word against her ? ” shrieks out my Lord. 
“ Did I ever doubt that she was pure 1 It would have been the 
last day of her life when I did. Do you fancy I think that she 
would go astray 1 No, she hasn’t passion enough for that. She 
neither sins nor forgives. I know her temper — and now I’ve lost 
her, by Heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I 
did — yes, when she was young and as beautiful as an angel — when 
she smiled at me in her old father’s house, and used to lie in wait 
for me there as I came from hunting — when I used to fling my 
head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap — and 
swear I would reform, and drink no more, and play no more, and 
follow women no more ; when all the men of the Court used to be 
following her — when she used to look with her child more beautiful, 
by George, than the Madonna in the Queen’s Chapel. I am not 
good like her, I know it. Who is — by Heaven, who is? I tired 
and wearied her, I know that very well. I could not talk to 
her. You men of wit and books could do that, and I couldn’t — I 
felt I couldn’t. Why, when you was but a boy of fifteen I could 
hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I 
was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were 
always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And 


141 


MY LORD’S CAUSE OF QUARREL 

I felt she didn’t belong to me : and the children don’t. And I 
besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of 
devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and 
she likes him, I know she likes him.” 

“ Indeed, and on my soul, you are wrong, sir,” Esmond cried. 

“She takes letters from him,” cries my Lord — “look here, 
Harry,” and he pulled out a paper with a brown stain of blood upon 
it. “ It fell from him that day he wasn’t killed. One of the 
grooms picked it up from the ground and gave it to me. Here it 

is in their d d comedy jargon. ‘ Divine Gloriana — Why look 

so coldly on your slave who adores you ? Have you no compassion 
on the tortures you have seen me suffering ? Do you vouchsafe no 
reply to billets that are written with the blood of my heart? ’ She 
had more letters from him.” 

“ But she answered none,” cries Esmond. 

“That’s not Mohun’s fault,” says my Lord, “and I will be 
revenged on him, as God’s in heaven, I will.” 

“For a light word or two, will you risk your lady’s honour 
and your family’s happiness, my Lord?” Esmond interposed 
beseechingly. 

“ Psha ! there shall be no question of my wife’s honour,” said 
my Lord ; “ we can quarrel on plenty of grounds beside. If I live, 
that villain will be punished ; if I fall, my family will be only the 
better : there will only be a spendthrift the less to keep in the 
world : and Frank has better teaching than his father. My mind 
is made up, Harry Esmond, and whatever the event is, I am easy 
about it. I leave my wife and you as guardians to the children.” 

Seeing that my Lord was bent upon pursuing this quarrel, and 
that no entreaties would draw him from it, Harry Esmond (then of 
a hotter and more impetuous nature than now, when care, and 
reflection, and grey hairs have calmed him) ^thought it was his duty 
to stand by his kind, generous patron, and said, “My Lord, if you 
are determined upon war, you must not go into it alone. ’Tis the 
duty of our house to stand by its chief ; and I shoidd neither forgive 
myself nor you if you did not call me, or I should be absent from 
you at a moment of danger.” 

“ Why, Harry, my poor boy, you are bred for a parson,” says 
my Lord, taking Esmond by the hand very kindly ; “ and it were 
a great pity that you should meddle in the matter.” 

“Your Lordship thought of being a churchman once,” Harry 
answered, “ and your father’s orders did not prevent him fighting 
at Castlewood against tlie Roundheads. Your enemies are mine, 
sir ; I can use the foils, as you have seen, indifferently well, and 
don’t think I shall be afraid when the buttons are taken oft' ’em.” 


Ii2 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


And then Harry explained, with some blushes and hesitation (for 
the matter was delicate, and he feared lest, by having put himself 
fotward in the quarrel, he might have offended his patron), how he 
had himself expostulated with the Lord Mohun, and proposed to 
measure swords with him if need were, and he could not be got to 
withdraw peaceably in this dispute. “ And I should have beat 
him, sir,” says Harry, laughing. “ He never could parry that hotte 
I brought from Cambridge. Let us have half-an-hour of it, and 
rehearse — I can teach it your Lordship ; ’tis the most delicate 
point in the world, and if you miss it, your adversary’s sword is 
through you.” 

“ By George, Harry, you ought to be the head of the house,” 
says my Lord gloomily. “You had been a better Lord Castlewood 
than a lazy sot like me,” he added, drawing his hand across his 
eyes, and surveying his kinsman with very kind and affectionate 
glances. 

“Let us take our coats off and have half-an-hour’s practice 
before nightfall,” says Harry, after thankfully grasping his patron’s 
manly hand. 

“You are but a little bit of a lad,” says my Lord good- 
humouredly ; “ but, in faith, I believe you could do for that felloAv. 
No, my boy,” he continued, “I’ll have none of your feints and 
tricks of stabbing : I can use my sword pretty well too, and will 
fight my own quarrel my own way.” 

“ But I shall be by to see fair play 1 ” cries Harry. 

“Yes, God bless you — you shall be by.” 

“ Wlien is it, sir?” says Harry, for he saw that the matter had 
been arranged privately and beforehand by my Lord. 

“ ’Tis arranged thus : I sent off a courier to Jack Westbury to 
say that I wanted him specially. He knows for what, and will be 
here presently, and drink part of that bottle of sack. Then we 
shall go to the theatre in Duke Street, where we shall meet Mohun ; 
and then we shall all go sup at the ‘ Rose ’ or the ‘ Greyhound.’ 
Then we shall call for cards, and there will be probably a difference 
over the cards — and then, God help us ! — either a wicked villain 
and traitor shall go out of the world, or a poor worthless devil, that 
doesn’t care to remain in it. I am better away, Hal — my wife will 
be all the liappier when I am gone,” says my Lord, with a groan, 
that tore the heart of Harry Esmond, so that he fairly broke into 
a sob over his patron’s kind liand. 

“ The business was talked over witli Mohun before he left home 
— Castlewood I mean ” -my Lord went on. “ I took the letter in to 
him, which I had read, and I charged him with liis villainy, and he 
could make no denial of it, only he said that my wife was innocent.” 


WE GO TO THE PLAY 


143 


“ And so she is ; before Heaven, my Lord, she is ! ” cries Harry. 

“ No doubt, no doubt. They always are,” says my Lord. “ No 
doubt, when she heard he was killed, she fainted from accident.” 

“ But, my Lord, my name is Harry,” cried out Esmond, burning 
red. “You told my Lady, ‘ Harry was killed ! ’ ” 

“Damnation ! shall I fight you too?” shouts my Lord in a fury. 
“ Are you, you little serpent, warmed by my fire, going to sting — 
youV — No, my boy, you’re an honest boy; you are a good boy.” 
(And here he broke from rage into tears even more cruel to see.) 
“You are an honest boy, and I love you ; and, by heavens, I am 
so wretched that I don’t care what sword it is that ends me. Stoj), 
here’s Jack Westbury. Well, Jack ! Welcome, old boy ! This is 
my kinsman, Harry Esmond.” 

“Who brought your bowls for you at Castlewood, sir,” says 
Harry, bowing; and the three gentlemen sat down and drank of 
that bottle of sack which was prepared for them. 

“Harry is number three,” says my Lord. “You needn’t be 
afraid of him. Jack.” And the Colonel gave a look, as much as to 
say, “ Indeed, he don’t look as if I need.” And then my Lord ex- 
plained what he had only told by hints before. When he quarrelled 
with Lord Mohun he was indebted to his Lordship in a sum of six- 
teen hundred pounds, for which Lord Mohun said he proposed to 
wait until my Lord Viscount should pay him. My Lord had raised 
the sixteen hundred pounds and sent them to Lord Mohun that 
morning, and before quitting home had put his affairs into order, 
and was now quite ready to abide the issue of the quarrel. 

When we had drunk a couple of bottles of sack, a coach was 
called, and the three gentlemen went to the Duke’s Play-house, as 
agreed. The play was one of Mr. Wycherley’s — “ Love in a Wood.” 

Harry Esmond has thought of that jJay ever since with a kind 
of terror, and of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress who performed the 
girl’s part in the comedy. She was disguised as a page, and came 
and stood before the gentlemen as they sat on the stage, and looked 
over her shoulder with a pair of arch black eyes, and laughed at my 
Lord, and asked what ailed the gentleman from the country, and 
had he had bad news from Bullock fair ? 

Between the acts of the play the gentlemen crossed over and 
conversed freely. There were two of Lord Mohun’s party. Captain 
Macartney, in a military habit, and a gentleman in a suit of blue 
velvet and silver in a fair periwig, with a rich fall of point of Venice 
lace — ray Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland. My Lord had 
a paper of oranges, whicli he ate and offered to the actresses, joking 
with them. And Mrs. Bracegirdle, when m‘y Lord Mohun said 
something rude, turned on him, and asked him what he did there. 


144 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and whether he and his friends had come to stab anybody else, as 
they did poor Will Mountford ? My Lord’s dark face grew darker 
at this taunt, and wore a mischievous, fatal look. They that saw it 
re^membered it, and said so afterward. 

When the play was ended the two parties joined company ; and 
my Lord Castlewood then .proposed that they should go to a tavern 
and sup. Lockit’s, the “Greyhound,” in Charing Cross, was the 
house selected. All six marched together that way ; the three lords 
going ahead. Lord Mohun’s captain, and Colonel Westbury, and 
Harry Esmond walking behind them. As they walked, Westbury 
told Harry Esmond about his old friend Dick the Scholar, who had 
got promotion, and was Cornet of the Guards, and had wrote a book 
called the “ Christian Hero,” and had all the Guards to laugh at 
him for his pains, for the Christian Hero was breaking the com- 
mandments constantly, Westbury said, and had fought one or two 
duels already. And, in a lower tone, Westbury besought young 
Mr. Esmond to take no part in the quarrel. “ There was no need 
for more seconds than one,” said the Colonel, “ and the Captain or 
Lord Warwick might easily withdraw.” But Harry said no ; he 
was bent on going through with the business. Indeed, he had a 
]ilan in his head, which, he thought, might prevent my Lord 
Viscount from engaging. 

They went in at the bar of the tavern, and desired a private 
room and wine and cards, and when the drawer had brought these, 
they began to drink and call healths, and as long as the servants 
were in the room appeared very friendly. 

Harry Esmond’s plan was no other than to engage in talk 
with Lord Mohun, to insult him, and so get the first of the quarrel. 
So when cards were proposed he offered to play. “ Psha ! ” 
says my Lord Mohun (whether wishing to save Harry, or not 
choosing to try the botte de Jesuite, it is not to be known); “young 
gentlemen from College should not play these stakes. You are too 
young.” 

“ Who dares say I am too young 1 ” broke out Harry. “ Is your 
Lordship afraid ? ” 

“ Afraid ! ” cries out Mohun. 

But my good Lord Viscount saw the move. “ I’ll play you for 
ten moidores, Mohun,” says he. “You silly boy, we don’t play for 
groats here as you do at Cambridge.” And Harry, who had no such 
sum in his pocket (for his half-year’s salary was always pretty well 
spent before it was due), fell back with rage and vexation in his 
lieart that he had not money enough to stake. 

“ I’ll stake the 'young gentleman a crown,” says the Lord 
Mohun’s captain. 


THE DISPUTE 


45 


“ I thought crowns were rather scarce with the gentlemen of the 
army,” says Harry. 

“Do they birch at College 1” says the Captain. 

“They birch fools,” says Harry, “and they cane bullies, and 
they fling })uppies into the water ’ 

“ Faith, then, there’s some escapes drowning,” says the Captain, 
who was an Irishman ; and all the gentlemen began to laugh, and 
made poor Harry only more angry. 

My Lord Mohun presently snufted a candle. It was when the 
drawers brought in fresh bottles and glasses and were in the room- 
on which my Lord Viscount said, “ The deuce take you, Mohun, how 
damned awkward you are ! Light the candle, you drawer.” 

“ Damned awkward is a damned awkward expression, my Lord,” 
says the other. “ Town gentlemen don’t use such words — or ask 
pardon if they do.” 

“ I’m a country gentleman,” says my Lord Viscount. 

“I see it by your manner,” says my Lord Mohun. “No man 
shall say damned awkward to me.” 

“ I fling the words in your face, my Lord,” says the other ; 
“shall I send the cards too?” 

“ Gentlemen, gentlemen ! before the servants 1 ” cry out Colonel 
Westbury and my Lord Warwick in a breath. The drawers go out of 
the room hastily. They tell the people below of the quarrel upstairs. 

“Enough has been said,” says Colonel Westbury. “Will your . 
Lordships meet to-morrow morning ? ” 

“ Will my Lord Castlewood withdraw his words ? ” asks the Earl 
of Warwick. 

“ My Lord Castlewood will be fii’st,” says Colom*! West- 

bury. 

“ Then we have nothing for it. Take notice, gentlemen, there 
have been outrageous words — reparation asked and refused.” 

“ And refused,” says my Lord Castlewood, putting on his hat. 

“ Where shall the meeting be ? and when ? ” 

“ Since my Lord refuses me satisfaction, which I deeply regret, 
there is no time so good as now,” says my Lord Mohun. “ Let us 
have chairs and go to Leicester Field.” 

“Are your Lordship and I to have the honour of exchanging a 
pass or two?” says Colonel Westbury, with a low bow to my Lord 
of Warwick and Holland. 

“It is an honour for me,” says my Lord, with a profound 
congde, “ to be matched with a gentleman who has been at Mons 
and Namur.” 

“ Will your Reverence permit me to give you a lesson ? ” says 
the Caj)tain. 


U6 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“Nay, nay, gentlemen, two on a side are plenty,” says Harry’s 
patron. “ Spare the boy. Captain Macartney,” and he shook 
Harry’s hand — ^for the last time, save one, in his life. 

At the bar of the tavern all the gentlemen stopped, and my 
Lord Viscount said, laughing, to the barwoman, that those cards 
set people sadly a-quarrelling ; but that the dispute was over now, 
and the parties were all going away to my Lord Mohun’s house in 
Bow Street, to drink a bottle more before going to bed. 

A half-dozen of chairs were now called, and the six gentlemen 
stepping into them, the word was privately given to the chairmen 
to go to Leicester Field, where the gentlemen were set down opposite 
the “ Standard Tavern.” It was midnight, and the town was a-bed 
by this time, and only a few lights in the windows of the houses ; 
but the night was bright enough for the unhappy purpose which 
the disputants came about ; and so all six entered into that fatal 
square, the chairmen standing without the railing and keeping the 
gate, lest any persons should disturb the meeting. 

All that happened there hath been matter of public notoriety, 
and is recorded, for warning to lawless men, in the annals of our 
country. After being engaged for not more than a couple of minutes, 
as Harry Esmond thought (though being occupied at the time with 
his own adversary’s point, which was active, he may not have taken 
a good note of time), a cry from the chairmen without, who were 
smoking their pipes, and leaning over the railings of the field as 
they watched the dim combat within, announced that some catas- 
trophe had happened, which caused Esmond to drop his sword and 
look round, at which moment his enemy wounded him in the right 
hand. Tint the young man did not heed this hurt much, and ran 
up to the place w'here he saw his dear master was down. 

My Lord Mohun was standing over him. 

“ Are you much hurt, Frank ? ” he asked in a hollow voice. 

“ I believe I’m a dead man,” my Lord said from the ground. 

“ No, no, not so,” says the other ; “ and I call God to witness, 
Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but 
given me a chance. In — in the first cause of our falling out, I 
swear that no one was to blame but me, and — and tliat mv 
Lady ” 

“ Hush ! ” says my poor Lord Viscount, lifting himself on his 
elbow and speaking faintly. “ ’Twas a dispute about the cards— 
the cursed cards. Harry my boy, are you wounded, too? God 
help thee ! I loved thee, Harry, and tiiou must watch over my 
little Frank — and — and carry this little heart to my wife.” 

And here my dear Lord felt in his breast for a locket he wore 
there, and, in the act, fell back fainting. 


A DEATH-BED CONFESSION 


147 


We were all at this terrified, thinking him dead; but Esmond 
and Colonel Westbury bade the chairmen come into the field; and 
so my Lord was carried to one Mr. Aimes, a surgeon, in Long Acre, 
who kept a bath, and there the house was wakened up, and the 
victim of this quarrel earned in. 

My Lord Viscount was put to bed, and his wound looked to by 
the surgeon, who seemed both kind and skilful. When he had 
looked to my Lord, he bandaged up Harry Esmond’s hand (who, 
from loss of blood, had fainted too, in the house, and may have been 
some time unconscious) ; and when the young man came to himself, 
you may be sure he eagerly asked what news there was of his dear 
patron ; on which the surgeon carried him to the room where the 
Lord Castle wood lay; who had already sent for a priest, and 
desired earnestly, they said, to speak with his kinsman. He was 
lying on a bed, very pale and ghastly, with that fixed, fatal look in 
his eyes, which betokens death ; and faintly beckoning all the other 
persons away from him with his hand, and crying out “ Only Harry 
Esmond,” the hand fell powerless down on the coverlet, as Harry 
came forward, and knelt down and kissed it. 

“ Thou art all but a priest, Harry,” my Lord Viscount gasped 
out, with a faint smile, and pressure of his cold hand. “ Are they 
all gone 1 Let me make thee a death-bed confession.” 

And with sacred Death waiting, as it were, at the bed-foot, as 
an awful witness of his words, the poor dying soul gasped out fiis 
last wishes in respect of his family ; — his humble profession of 
contrition for his faults ;— and his charity towards the world he 
was leaving. Some things he said concerned Harry Esmond as 
much as they astonished him. And my Lord Viscount, sinking 
visibly, was in the midst of these strange confessions, when the 
ecclesiastic for whom my Lord had sent, Mr. Atterbury, arrived. 

This gentleman had reached to no great church -lignity as yet, 
but was only preacher at St. Brid e’s, drawing all the town thither 
by his eloquent sermons. He was godson to my Lord, who had 
been pupil to his father; had paid a visit to Castlewood from 
Oxford more than once ; and it was by his advice, I tliink, that 
Harry Esmond was sent to Cambridge, rather than to Oxford, of 
which place Mr. Atterbury, though a distinguished member, spoke 
but ill. 

Our messenger found the good priest already at his books at 
five o’clock in the morning, and he followed the man eagerly to the 
house where my poor Lord Viscount lay — Esmond watching him, 
and taking his dying words from his nioutlj. 

My Lord, hearing of Mr. Atterbury’s arrival, and squeezing 
Esmond’s liand, asked to be alone with the priest ; and Esmond 


148 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


left them there for this solemn interview. You may be sure that 
his own prayers and grief accompanied that dying benefactor. My 
Lord had said to him that which confounded the young man — 
informed him of a secret which greatly concerned him. Indeed, 
after hearing it, he had had good cause for doubt and dismay ; for 
mental anguish as well as resolution. While the colloquy between 
Mr. Atterbury and his dying penitent took place within, an 
immense contest of perplexity was agitating Lord Castlewood’s 
young companion. 

At the end of an hour — it may be more — Mr. Atterbury came 
out of the room, looking very hard at Esmond, and holding a 
paper. 

“ He is on the brink of God’s awful judgment,” the priest 
whispered. “He has made his breast clean to me. He forgives 
and believes, and makes restitution. Shall it be in public I Shall 
we call a witness to sign it ? ” 

“ God knows,” sobbed out the young man, “ my dearest Lord 
has only done me kindness all his life.” 

The priest put the paper into Esmond’s hand. He looked at it. 
It swam before his eyes. 

“ ’Tis a confession,” he said. 

“ ’Tis as you please,” said Mr. Atterbury. 

There was a fire in the room, where the cloths were drying for 
the baths, and there lay a heap in a corner, saturated with the blood 
of my dear Lord’s body. Esmond went to the fire, and threw the 
paper into it. ’Twas a great chimney with glazed Dutch tiles. 
How we remember such trifles in such awful moments ! — the scrap 
of the book that we have read in a great grief — the taste of that 
last dish that we have eaten before a duel, or some such supreme 
meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the bagnio was a rude 
picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau’s 
birthright. The burning paper lighted it up. 

“ ’Tis only a confession, Mr. Atterbury,” said the young man. 
He leaned Ids head against the mantelpiece : a burst of tears came 
to his eyes. They were the first he had shed as he sat by his lord, 
scared by this calamity, and more yet by what the poor dying 
gentleman had told him, and shocked to think that he should 
be the agent of bringing this double misfortune on those he 
loved best. 

“ Let us go to him,” said Mr. Esmond. And accordingly they 
went into the next chamber, where by this time the dawn had 
broke, which showed my Lord’s poor pale face and wild appealing 
eyes, that wore that awful fetal look of coming dissolution. The 
surgeon was with him. He went into the chamber as Atterbury 


149 


REQUIESCAT IN PACE 

came out thence. My Lord Viscount turned round liis sick eyes 
towards Esmond. It choked the other to hear that luttle in 
his throat. 

“ My Lord Viscount,” says Mr. Atterbury, “ Mr. Esmond wants 
no witnesses, and hath burned the paper.” 

“ My dearest master ! ” Esmond said, kneeling down, and taking 
his hand and kissing it. 

My Lord Viscount sprang up in his bed, and flung his arms 

round Esmond. “ God bl — bless ” was all he said. The blood 

rushed from his mouth, deluging the young man. My dearest Lord 
was no more. He was gone with a blessing on his lips, and love 
and repentance and kindness in his manly heart. 

“ Benedicti benedicentes,” says Mr. Atterbury, and the young 
man, kneeling at the bedside, groaned out an “Amen.” 

“Who shall take the news to her*?” was Mr. Esmond’s next 
thought. And on this he besought Mr. Atterbury to bear the 
tidings to Castlewood. He could not face his mistress himself with 
those dreadful news. Mr. Atterbury complying kindly, Esmond 
writ a hasty note on his table-book to my Lord’s man, bidding him 
get the horses for Mr. Atterbury, and ride with him, and send 
Esmond’s own valise to the Gatehouse prison, whither he resolved 
to go and give himself up. 


BOOK II 


CONTAINS MR. ESMOND’S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER 
MATTERS APPERTAINING TO THE ESMOND FAMILY 

CHAPTER I 

I AM IN PRISON, AND VISITED, BUT NOT CONSOLED THERE 
HOSE may imagine, who have seen death untimely strike 



down persons revered and beloved, and know how unavailing 


consolation is, what was Harry Esmond’s anguish after being 
an actor in that ghastly midnight scene of blood and homicide. He 
could not, he felt, have faced his dear mistress, and told her that 
story. He waa thankful that kind Atterbury consented to break 
the sad news to her ; but, besides his grief, which he took into 
prison with him, he had that in his heart which secretly cheered 
and consoled him. 

A great secret had been told to Esmond by his unhappy stricken 
kinsman, lying on his death-bed. Were he to disclose it, as in 
equity and honour he might do, the discovery would but bring 
greater grief upon those whom he loved best in the world, and who 
were sad enough already. Should he bring down shame and per- 
plexity upon all those beings to whom he was attached by so many 
tender ties of affection and gratitude 1 degrade his father’s widow ^ 
impeach and sully his father’s and kinsman’s honour 1 and for what 1 
For a barren title, to be worn at the expense of an innocent boy, 
the son of his dearest benefactress. He had debated this matter in 
his conscience, whilst his poor lord was making his dying confession. 
On one side were ambition, temptation, justice even ; but love, 
gratitude, and fidelity pleaded on the other. And when the struggle 
was over in Harry’s mind, a glow of righteous happiness filled it ; 
and it was with grateful tears in his eyes that he returned thanks 
to God for that decision which he had been enabled to make. 

“ When I was denied by my own blood,” thought he, “ these 
dearest friends received and cherished me. When I was a nameless 


IN PRISON 


151 


orphan myself, and needed a protector, I found one in yonder kind 
soul, who has gone to his account repenting of tlie innocent wrong 
he has done.” 

And with this consoling thought he went away to give himself 
up at the prison, after kissing the cold lips of his benefactor. 

It was on the third day after he had come to the Gatehouse 
I)rison (where he lay in no small pain from his wound, which in- 
flamed and ached severely), and with those thoughts and resolutions 
that have been just spoke of, to depress, and yet to console him, 
that H. Esmond’s keeper came and told him that a visitor was 
asking for him, and though he could not see her face, which was 
enveloped in a black hood, her whole figure, too, being veiled and 
covered with the deepest mourning, Esmond knew at once that his 
visitor was his dear mistress. 

He got up from his bed, where he was lying, being very weak ; 
and advancing towards her as the retiring keeper shut the door 
upon him and his guest in that sad place, he put forward his left 
hand (for the right was wounded and bandaged), and he would 
have taken that kind one of his mistress, which had done so many 
offices of friendship for him for so many years. 

But the Lady Castlewood went back from him, putting back 
her hood, and leaning against the great stanchioned door which the 
gaoler had just closed upon them. Her face was ghastly white, as 
Esmond saw it, looking from the hood ; and her eyes, ordinarily so 
sweet and tender, were fixed on him with such a tragic glance of 
woe and anger, as caused tlie young man, unaccustomed to unkind- 
ness from that person, to avert his own glances from her face. 

“ And this, Mr. Esmond,” she said, “ is where I see you ; and 
’tis to this you have brought me ! ” 

“You have come to console me in my calamity, madam,” said 
he (though, in truth, he scarce knew how to address her, his 
emotions at beholding her so overpowered him). 

She advanced a little, but stood silent and trembling, looking 
out at him from her black draperies, with her small white hands 
clasped together, and quivering lips and hollow eyes. 

“ Not to reproach me,” he continued after a pause. “My grief 
is sufficient as it is.” 

“ Take back your hand — do not touch me with it ! ” she cried. 
“ Look ! there’s blood on it ! ” 

“ I wish they had taken it all,” said Esmond ; “if you are 
unkind to me.” 

“ Where is my husband ? ” she broke out. “ Give me back my 
husband, Henry ! Why did you stand by at midnight and see him 
murdered'? Why did the traitor escape who did it'? You, the 


152 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

champion of our house, who offered to die for us ! You that lu' 
loved and trusted, and to whom I confided him —you that vowed 
devotion and gratitude, and I believed you — yes, I believed you — 
why are you here, and my noble Francis gone ? Why did you come 
among us ? You have only brought us grief and sorrow ; and 
repentance, bitter, bitter repentance, as a return for our love and 
kindness. Did I ever do you a wrong, Henry ? You were but an 
orphan child when I first saw you — when he first saw you, who was 
so good, and noble, and trusting. He would have had you sent 
away, but, like a foolish woman, I besought him to let you stay. 
And you pretended to love us, and we believed you — and you made 
our house wretched, and my husband’s heart went from me : and I 
lost him through you — I lost him — the husband of my youth, I say. 
I worshipped him : you know I worshipped him— and he was 
changed to me. He was no more my Francis of old — my dear, dear 
soldier. He loved me before he saw you ; and I loved him. Oh, 
God is my witness how I loved him ! Why did he not send you 
from among usl ’Twas only his kindness, that could refuse me 
nothing then. And, young as you were — yes, and weak and alone 
— there was evil, I knew there was evil in keeping you. I read it 
in your face and eyes. I saw that they boded harm to us — and it 
came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you had the 
smallpox — and I came myself and watched you, and you didn’t 
know me in your delirium — and you called out for me, though I 
was there at your side ? All that has happened since was a just 
judgment on my wicked heart — my wicked jealous heart. Oh, I 
am punished — awfully punished ! My husband lies in his blood — 
murdered for defending me, my kind, kind, generous lord — and you 
were by, and you let him die, Henry ! ” 

These words, uttered in the wildness of her grief by one who 
was ordinarily quiet, and spoke seldom except with a gentle smile 
and a soothing tone, rung in Esmond’s ear ; and ’tis said that he 
repeated many of them in the fever into which he now fell from his 
wound, and perhaps from the emotion which such passionate, un- 
deserved upbraidings caused him. It seemed as if his very sacrifices 
and love for this lady and her family were to turn to evil and 
reproach : as if his presence amongst them was indeed a cause of 
grief, and the continuance of his life but woe and bitterness to theirs. 
As the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly, rapidly, without a tear, 
he never offered a word of appeal or remonstrance : but sat at the 
foot of his prison-bed, stricken only with the more pain at thinking 
it was that soft and beloved hand which should stab him so cruelly, 
and powerless against her fatal sorrow. Her words as she spoke 
struck the chords of all his memory, and the whole of his boyhood 


1.53 


LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING 

and youth passed within him ; whilst his lady, so fond and gentle 
but yesterday — this good angel whom he had loved and worshipped — 
stood before him, pursuing him with keen words and aspect malign. 

“ I wish I were in my Lord’s place,” he groaned out. “ It was 
not my fault that I was not there, madam. But Fate is stronger 
than all of us, and willed what has come to pass. It had been better 
for me to have died when I had the illness.” 

“ Yes, Henry,” said she — and as she spoke she looked at him 
with a glance that was at once so fond and so sad, that the young 
man, tossing up his arms, wildly fell back, hiding his head in the 
coverlet of the bed. As he turned he struck against the wall with 
his wounded hand, displacing the ligature; and he felt the blood 
rushing again from the wound. He remembered feeling a secret 
pleasure at the accident — and thinking, “ Suppose I were to end 
now, who would grieve for me ? ” 

This hemorrhage, or the grief and despair in which the luckless 
young man was at the time of the accident, must have brought on 
a deliquium presently ; for he had scarce any recollection afterwards, 
save of some one, his mistress probably, seizing his hand — and then 
of the buzzing noise in his ears as he awoke, with two or three 
persons of the prison around his bed, whereon he lay in a pool of 
blood from his arm. 

It was now bandaged up again by the prison surgeon, who 
happened to be in the place ; and the governor’s wife and servant, 
kind people both, were with the patient. Esmond saw his mistress 
still in the room when he awoke from his trance ; but she went 
away without a word ; though the governor’s wife told him that she 
sat in her room for some time afterward, and did not leave the 
prison until she heard that Esmond was likely to do well. 

Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever 
which he had, and which attacked him that night pretty sharply, 
the honest keeper’s wife brought her patient a handkerchief fresh 
washed and ironed, and at the corner of which he recognised his 
mistress’s well-known cipher and viscountess’s crown. “The lady 
had bound it round his arm when he fainted, and before she called 
for help,” the keeper’s wife said. “ Poor lady ! she took on sadly 
about her husband. He has been buried to-day, and a many of the 
coaches of the nobility went with him — my Lord Marlborough’s 
and my Lord Sunderland’s, and many of the officers of the Guards, 
in which he served in the old King’s time ; and my Lady has been 
with her two children to the King at Kensington, and asked for 
justice against my Lord Mohun, who is in hiding, and my Lord 
the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who is ready to give himself 
up and take his trial.” 


154 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Such was the news, coupled with assertions about her own 
honesty and that of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen 
a certain trumpery gold sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond’s that was 
missing after his fainting-fit, that the keeper’s wife brought to her 
lodger. His thoughts followed to that untimely grave the brave 
heart, the kind friend, the gallant gentleman, honest of word and 
generous of thought if feeble of purpose (but are his betters much 
stronger than hel), who had given him bread and shelter when he 
had none ; home and love when he needed them ; and who, if he 
had kept one vital secret from him, had done that of which he 
repented ere dying — a wrong indeed, but one followed by remorse, 
and occasioned by almost irresistible temptation. 

Esmond took the handkerchief when his nurse left him, and 
very likely kissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the 
corner. “It has cost thee grief enough,” he thought, “dear lady, 
so loving and so tender. Shall I take it from thee and thy 
children 1 No, never! Keep it, and wear it, my little Frank, 
my pretty boy ! If I cannot make a name for myself, I can die 
without one. Some day, when my dear mistress sees my heart, 
I shall be righted ; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere ; where 
Honour doth not follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual.” 

’Tis needless to relate here, as the reports of the lawyers already 
have chronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which 
ensued upon my Lord Castlewood’s melancholy homicide. Of the 
two lords engaged in that sad matter, the second, my Lord the 
Earl of Warwick and Holland, who had been engaged with Colonel 
Westbury, and wounded by him, was found not guilty by his peers, 
before whom he was tried (under the presidence of the Lonl 
Steward, Lord Somers) ; and the principal, the Lord Mohun, being 
found guilty of the manslaughter (which, indeed, was forced upon 
him, and of which he repented most sincerely), pleaded his clergy, 
and so was discharged without any penalty. The widow of the 
slain nobleman, as it was told us in prison, showed an extraordinary 
spirit ; and, though she had to wait for ten years before her son 
was old enough to compass it, declared she would have revenge of 
her husband’s murderer. So much and suddenly had grief, anger, 
and misfortune appeared to change her. But fortune, good or ill, 
as I take it, does not change men and women. It but develops 
their character. As there are a thousand thoughts lying within 
a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write, 
so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it in his 
own breast. Who hath not found himself surprised into revenge, 
or action, or passion, for good or evil, whereof the seeds lay within 
him, latent and unsuspected, until the occasion called them forth? 


THOMAS TUSHER 


15 ,^ 


With the death of her lord, a change seemed to come over the whole 
conduct and mind of Lady Castlewood ; but of this we shall speak 
in the right season and anon. 

The lords being tried then before their peers at Westminster, 
according to their privilege, being brought from the Tower with 
state processions and barges, and accompanied by lieutenants and 
axemen, the commoners engaged in that melancholy fray took their 
trial at Newgate, as became them ; and, being all found guilty, 
pleaded likewise their benefit of clergy. The sentence, as we all 
know in these cases, is, that the culprit lies a year in prison, or 
during the King’s pleasure, and is burned in the hand, or only 
stamped with a cold iron ; or this part of the punishment is alto- 
gether remitted at the grace of the Sovereign. So Harry Esmond 
found himself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twenty years 
old ; as for the two colonels, his comrades, they took the matter 
very lightly. Duelling was a part of their business ; and they 
could not in honour refuse any invitations of that sort. 

But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was 
changed by that stroke of the sword which destroyed his kind 
patron’s. As he lay in prison, old Doctor Tusher fell ill and died ; 
and Lady Castlewood appointed Thomas Tusher to the vacant living ; 
about the filling of which she had a thousand times fondly talked 
to Harry Esmond : how they never should part ; how he should 
educate her boy ; how to be a country clergyman, like saintly 
George Herbert or pious Doctor Ken, was the happiest and greatest 
lot in life ; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her 
part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess’s opinion, that a 
bishop should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman 1) 
she would find a good wife for Harry Esmond ; and so on, with a 
hundred pretty prospects told by fireside evenings, in fond prattle, 
{IS the children played about the hall. All these plans were over- 
thrown now. Thomas Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, 
announcing that his patroness had conferred upon him the living his 
reverend father had held for many years ; that she never, after the 
tragical events which had occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very 
edifying horror), could see in the revered Tusher’s pulpit, or at her 
son’s table, the man who was answerable for the father’s life ; that 
her Ladyship bade him to say that she prayed for her kinsman’s 
repentance and his worldly happiness ; that he was free to command 
her aid for any scheme of life which he might propose to himself ; 
but that on this side of the grave she would see him no more. 
And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harry should have his 
prayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilst he was 
in prison to read certain works of theology, which his Reverence 


156 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

pronounced to be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable 
condition. 

And this was the return for a life of devotion — this the end of 
years of affectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity ! Harry 
would have died for his patron, and was held as little better than 
his murderer ; he had sacrificed, she did not know how much, for 
his mistress, and she threw him aside ; he had endowed her family 
with all they had, and she talked about giving him alms as to a 
menial ! The grief for his patron’s loss : the pains of his own 
present position, and doubts as to the future : all these were for- 
gotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which he had to 
endure, and overpowered by the superior pang of that torture. 

He writ back a letter to Mr. Tusher from his prison, congratu- 
lating his Reverence upon his appointment to the living of Castle- 
wood : sarcastically bidding him to follow in the footsteps of his 
admirable father, whose gown had descended upon him ; thanking 
her Ladyship for her offer of alms, which he said he should trust 
not to need ; and beseeching her to remember that, if ever her 
determination should change towards him, he would be ready to 
give her proofs of a fidelity which had never wavered, and which 
ought never to have been questioned by that house. “ And if we 
meet no more, or only as strangers in this world,” Mr. Esmond con- 
cluded, “a sentence against the cruelty and injustice of which I 
disdain to appeal ; hereafter she will know who was faithful to her, 
and whether she had any cause to suspect the love and devotion of 
her kinsman and servant.” 

After the sending of this letter, the poor young fellow’s mind 
was more at ease than it had been previously. The blow had been 
struck, and he had borne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her 
wings and fled ; and left him alone and friendless, but virtute smi. 
And he had to bear him up, at once the sense of his right and tlie 
feeling of his wrongs, his honour and his misfortune. As I have 
seen men waking and running to arms at a sudden trumpet, before 
emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute ; meets the threatening 
danger with undaunted countenance ; and, whether conquered or 
conquering, faces it always. Ah ! no man knows his strength or 
his weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts 
and actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks 
with shame, sure there are some which he may be proud to own and 
remember : forgiven injuries, conquered temptations (now and then), 
and difficulties vanquished by endurance. 

It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any 
^great ]>oignancy of grief respecting the dead, which aftected Harry 
Esmond whilst in ])rison after his trial : but it may be imagined 


MY FELLOW-PKISONERS 


157 


that he could take no comrade of misfortune into the confidence 
of his feelings, and they thought it was remorse and sorrow for 
his patron’s loss which affected the young man, in error of which 
opinion he chose to leave them. As a companion he was so moody 
and silent that the two officers, his fellow-sufferers, left him to 
himself mostly, liked little very likely what they knew of him, 
consoled themselves with dice, cards, and the bottle, and whiled 
away their own captivity in their owm way. It seemed to Esmond 
as if he lived years in that prison : and was changed and aged 
when he came out of it. At certain periods of life we live years 
of emotion in a few weeks — and look back on those times, as on 
great gaps between the old life and the new. You do not know 
how much you suffer in those critical maladies of the heart, until 
the disease is over and you look back on it afterwards. During 
the time, the suffering is at least sufferable. The day passes in 
more or less of pain, and the night wears away somehow. ’Tis 
only in after days that we see what the danger has been — as a 
man out a-hunting or riding for his life looks at a leap, and wonders 
liow he should have survived the taking of it. 0 dark months of 
grief and rage ! of wrong and cruel endurance ! He is old now 
who recalls you. Long ago he has forgiven and blest the soft 
hand that wounded him ; but the mark is there, and the wound 
is cicatrised only — no time, tears, caresses, or repentance can 
obliterate the scar. We are indocile to put up with grief, how- 
ever. Rejicimus rates qimssas : we tempt the ocean again and 
again, and try upon new ventures. Esmond thought of his early 
time as a noviciate, and of this past trial as an initiation before 
entering into life— as our young Indians undergo tortures silently 
before they pass to the rank of warriors in the tribe. 

The officers, meanwhile, who were not let into the secret of 
the grief which was gnawing at the side of their silent young friend, 
and being accustomed to such transactions, in which one comrade 
or another was daily paying the forfeit of the sword, did not, of 
course, bemoan themselves very inconsolably about the fate of their 
late companion in arms. This one told stories of former adventures 
of love, or w^ar, or pleasure, in which poor Frank Esmond had been 
engaged ; t’other recollected how a constable had been bilked, or 
a tavern-bully beaten : whilst my Lord’s poor widow was sitting 
at his tomb worshipping him as an actual saint and spotless hero 
— so the visitors said who had news of Lady Castlewood ; and 
Westbury and Macartney had pretty nearly had all the town to 
come and see them. 

The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and 
the three commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement 


158 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


ill the town. The prints and news-letters were full of them. The 
three gentlemen in Newgate were almost as much crowded as the 
Bishops in the Tower, or a highwayman before execution. We 
were allowed to live in the Governor’s house, as hath been said, 
both before trial and after condemnation, waiting the King’s 
jileasure ; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel known, so 
closely had my Lord and the two other persons who knew it kept 
the secret, but every one imagined that the origin of the meeting 
was a gambling dispute. Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon 
payment, most things they could desire. Interest was made that 
they should not mix with the vulgar convicts, whose ribald choruses 
and loud laughter and curses could be heard from their own part 
of the prison, where they and the miserable debtors were confined 
pell-mell. 


CHAPTER II 


I COME TO THE END OF MY CAPTIVITY, BUT NOT OF 
MY TROUBLE 

^lONG the company which came to visit the two officers was 



an old accpiaintance of Harry Esmond ; that gentleman of 


^ ^ the Guards, namely, who had been so kind to Harry when 

Captain Westbury s troop had been quartered at Castlewood more 
than seven years before. Dick the Scholar was no longer Dick 
the Trooper now, but Captain Steele of Lucas’s Fusileers, and 
secretary to my Lord Cutts, that famous officer of King William’s, 
the bravest and most beloved man of the English army. The two 
jolly prisoners had been drinking with a party of friends (for our 
cellar, and that of the keepers of Newgate too, were supplied with 
endless hampers of burgundy and champagne that the friends 
of the Colonels sent in) ; and Harry, having no wish for their drink 
or their conversation, being too feeble in health for the one and 
too sad in spirits for the other, was sitting apart in his little room, 
reading such books as he had, one evening, when honest Colonel 
Westbury, Hushed with liquor, and always good-humoured in and out 
of his cups, came laughing into Harry’s closet and said, “ Ho, young 
Killjoy ! here’s a friend come to see thee ; he’ll pray with thee, 
or he’ll drink with thee ; or he’ll drink and pray turn about. Dick, 
my Christian hero, here’s the little scholar of Castlewood.” 

Dick came up and kissed Esmond on both cheeks, imparting 
a strong perfume of burnt sack along with his caress to the young 
man. 

“ What ! is this the little man that used to talk Latin and 
fetch oiu* bowls ? How tall thou art grown ! I protest I should 
have known thee anywhere. And so you have turned ruffian and 
fighter; and wanted to measure swords with Mohun, did you'? I 
protest that Mohun said at the Guard dinner yesterday, where there 
was a pretty company of us, that the young fellow wanted to fight 
him, and was the better man of the two.” 

“ I wish we could have tried and proved it, Mr. Steele,” says 
Esmond, thinking of his dead benefactor, and his eyes filling with 
tears. 


160 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

With the exception of that one crnel letter which he had from 
liis mistress, Mr. Esmond heard notliing from her, and she seemed 
determined to execute her resolve of parting from him and disowning 
him. But he had news of her, such as it was, which Mr. Steele 
assiduously brought him from the Prince’s and Princess’s Court, 
where our honest Captain had been advanced to the post of gentleman 
waiter. When oft' duty there. Captain Dick often came to console 
his friends in captivity ; a good nature and a friendly disposition 
towards all who were in ill-fortune no doubt prompting him to make ■ 
his visits, and good-fellowship and good wine to prolong them. j 

“Faith,” says Westbury, “the little scholar was the first to i 
begin the quarrel — I mind me of it now — at Lockit’s. I always ! 
hated that fellow Mohun. What was the real cause of the quarrel 
betwixt him and poor Frank? I would wager ’twas a woman.” 

“ ’Twas a quarrel about play — on my word, about play,” Harry 
said. “ My poor lord lost great sums to his guest at Castle wood. 
Angry words passed between them ; and though Lord Castlewood 
was the kindest and most pliable soul alive, his spirit was very 
high ; and hence that meeting which has brought us all here,” says 
Mr. Esmond, resolved never to acknowledge that there had ever 
been any other cause but cards for the duel. 

“ I do not like to use bad words of a nobleman,” says Westbury ; 

“ but if my Lord Mohun were a commoner, I would say, ’twas a pity 
he was not hanged. He was familiar with dice and women at a time 
other boys are at school being birched; he was as wicked as the 
oldest rake, years ere he had done growing ; and handled a sword 
and a foil, and a bloody one too, before he ever used a razor. He 
held poor Will Mountford in talk that night when bloody Dick Hill 
ran him through. He will come to a bad end, will that young lord ; 
and no end is bad enough for him,” says honest Mr. Westbury : 
whose prophecy was fulftlled twelve years after, upon that fatal day 
when Mohun fell, dragging down one of the bravest and gi'eatest 
gentlemen in England in his fall. 

From Mr. Steele, then, who brought the public rumour, as well 
as his own private intelligence, Esmond learned the movements of 
his unfortunate mistress. Steele’s heart was of very inflammable 
composition ; and the gentleman usher spoke in terms of boundless 
admiration both of the widow (that most beautiful woman, as he 
said) and of her daughter, who, in the Captain’s eyes, was a still 
greater paragon. If the pale widow, whom Captain Richard, in 
his poetic rapture compared to a Niobe in tears — to a Sigismunda 
— to a weeping Belvidera — was an object the most lovely and 
pathetic which his eyes had ever beheld, or for which his heart had 
melted, even her ripened perfections and beauty were as nothing 


MY RAGE AND DESPAIR 


l6l 


compared to the promise of that extreme loveliness which the good 
Captain saw in her daughter. It was matre pulcra^ Jilia pmlcrioy'. 
Steele composed sonnets whilst he was on duty in his Prince’s ante- 
chamber, to the maternal and filial charms. He would speak for houre 
about them to Harry Esmond ; and, indeed, he could have chosen few 
subjects more likely to interest the unhappy young man, whose heart 
was now as always devoted to these ladies ; and who was thankful 
to all who loved them, or praised them, or wished them well. 

Not that his fidelity was recompensed by any answering kind- 
ness, or show of relenting even, on the part of a mistress obdurate 
now after ten years of love and benefactions. The poor young man 
getting no answer, save Tusher’s, to that letter which he had written, 
and being too proud to write more, opened a part of his heart to 
Steele, than whom no man, when unhappy, could find a kinder 
hearer, or more friendly emissary ; described (in words which were 
no doubt pathetic, for they came imo pectore, and caused honest 
Dick to weep plentifully) his youth, his constancy, his fond devotion 
to that household which had reared him ; his affection, how earned, 
and how tenderly requited until but yesterday, and (as far as he 
might) the circumstances and causes for which that sad quarrel had 
made of Esmond a prisoner under sentence, a widow and orphans of 
those whom in life he held dearest. In terms that might well move 
a harder-hearted man than young Esmond’s confidant — for, indeed, 
the speaker’s own heart was half broke as he uttered them — he 
described a part of what had taken place in that only sad interview 
which his mistress had granted him ; how she had left him with 
anger and almost imprecation, whose words and thoughts until then 
had been only blessing and kindness ; how^ she had accused him of 
the guilt of that blood, in exchange for which he would cheerfully 
have sacrificed his own (indeed, in this the Lord Mohun, the Lord 
Warwick, and all the gentlemen engaged, as wtII as the common 
rumour out of doors — Steele told him — bore out the luckless young 
man) ; and with all his heart, and tears, he besought Mr. Steele to 
inform his mistress of her kinsman’s unhappiness, and to deprecate 
that cruel anger she showed him. Half frantic with grief at the 
injustice done him, and contrasting it with a thousand soft recollec- 
tions of love and confidence gone by, that made his present misery 
inexpressibly more bitter, the poor wretch passed many a lonely 
day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage 
against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck 
him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted 
him. “I would as lief,” he said, “have pleaded guilty to the 
murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to 
endure the torture to which my mistress subjects me.” 

7 


L 


162 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Although the recital of Esmond’s story, and his passionate 
appeals and remonstrances, drew so many tears from Dick who 
heard them, they had no effect upon the person whom they were de- 
signed to move. Esmond’s ambassador came back from the mission 
with which the poor young gentleman had charged him, vdth a sad 
blank face and a shake of the head, which told that there was no 
hope for the prisoner ; and scarce a wretched culprit in that prison 
of Newgate ordered for execution, and trembling for a reprieve, 
felt more cast down than Mr. Esmond, innocent and condemned. 

As had been arranged between the prisoner and his counsel in 
their consultations, Mr. Steele had gone to the Dowager’s house in 
Ohelsey, where it has been said the widow and her orphans were, 
had seen my Lady Viscountess, and pleaded the cause of her un- 
fortunate kinsman. “And I think I spoke well, my poor boy,” 
says Mr. Steele ; “for who would not speak well in such a cause, 
and before so beautiful a judge 1 I did not see the lovely Beatrix 
(sure her famous namesake of Florence was never half so beautiful), 
only the young Viscount was in the room with the Lord Churchill, 
my Lord of Marlborough’s eldest son. But these young gentlemen 
went off to the garden ; I could see them from the window tilting 
at each other with poles in a mimic tournament (grief touches the 
young but lightly, and I remember that I beat a drum at the 
coffin of my own father). My Lady Viscountess looked out at the 
two boys at their game and said, ‘You see, sir, children are taught 
to use weapons of death as toys, and to make a sport of murder ; ’ 
and as she spoke she looked so lovely, and stood there in herself so 
sad and beautiful an instance of that doctrine whereof I am a 
humble preaclier, that had I not dedicated my little volume of the 
‘ Christian Hero ’ — (I perceive, Harry, thou hast not cut the leaves 
of it. The sermon is good, believe me, though the preacher’s life 
may not answer it) — I say, hadn’t I dedicated the volume to Lord 
Cutts, I would have asked permission to place her Ladyship’s name 
on the first page. I think I never saw such a beautiful violet as that 
of her eyes, Harry. Her complexion is of the pink of the blush-rose, 
she hath an exquisite turned wrist, and dimpled hand, and I make 
no doubt ” 

“ Did you come to tell me about the dimples on my Lady’s 
hand ? ” broke out Mr. Esmond sadly. 

“ A lovely creature in affliction seems always doubly beautiful 
to me,” says the poor Captain, who indeed was but too often in a 
state to see double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted 
thread of his story. “As I spoke my business,” Mr. Steele said, 
“ and narrated to your mistress what all the world knows, and the 
other side hath been eager to acknowledge — that you had tried to 


MY MISTRESS IS RELENTLESS 163 

put yourself between the two lords, and to take your patron’s 
quarrel on your own point ; I recounted the general praises of your 
gallantry, besides my Lord Mohun’s particular testimony to it ; I 
thought the widow listened with some interest, and her eyes — I 
have never seen such a violet, Harry — looked up at mine once or 
twice. But after I had spoken on this theme for a while she 
suddenly broke away with a cry of grief. ‘ I would to God, sir,’ 
she said, ‘ I had never heard that word gallantry which you use, 
or known the meaning of it. My Lord might have been here 
but for that ; my home might be happy ; my poor boy have a 
father. It was what you gentlemen call gallantry came into my 
home, and drove my husband on to the cruel sword that killed him. 
You should not speak the word to a Christian woman, sir, a poor 
widowed mother of orphans, whose home was happy until the 
world came into it — the wicked godless world, that takes the blood 
of the innocent, and lets the guilty go free.’ 

“ As the afflicted lady spoke in this strain, sir,” Mr. Steele con- 
tinued, “"it seemed as if indignation moved her, even more than 
grief. ‘ Compensation ! ’ she went on passionately, her cheeks and 
eyes kindling ; ‘ what compensation does your world give the widow 
for her husband, and the children for the murder of their father ? 
The wretch who did the deed has not even a punishment. Con- 
science ! what conscience has he, who can enter the house of a 
friend, whisper falsehood and insult to a woman that never harmed 
him, and stab the kind heart that trusted him? My Lord — my 
Lord Wretch’s, my Lord Villain’s, my Lord Murderer’s peers meet 
to try him, and they dismiss him with a word or two of reproof, and 
send him into the world again, to pursue women with lust and false- 
hood, and to murder unsuspecting guests that harbour him. That 
day, my Lord — my Lord Murderer— (I will never name him) — was 
let loose, a woman was executed at Tyburn for stealing in a shop. 
But a man may rob another of his life, or a lady of her honour, and 
shall pay no penalty ! I take my child, run to the throne, and on 
my knees ask for justice, and the King refuses me. The King ! he 
is no king of mine — he never shall be. He, too, robbed the throne 
from the king his father — the true king — and he has gone un- 
punished, as the great do.’ 

“ I then thought to speak for you,” Mr. Steele continued, “ and 
I interposed by saying, ‘There was one, madam, who, at least, would 
have put his own breast between your husband’s and my Lord 
Mohun’s sword. Your poor young kinsman, Harry Esmond, hath 
told me that he tried to draw the quarrel on himself.’ 

“ ‘ Are you come from him 1 ’ asked the lady (so Mr. Steele went 
on), rising up with a great severity and stateliness. ‘ I thought you 


164 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

had come from the Princess. I saw Mr. Esmond in his prison, and 
bade him farewell. He brought misery into my house. He never 
should have entered it.’ 

“ ‘ Madam, madam, he is not to blame,’ I interposed,” continued 
Mr. Steele. 

“ ‘ Do I blame him to you, sir 1 ’ asked the widow. ‘ If ’tis he 
who sent you, say that I have taken counsel, where ’ — she spoke 
with a very pallid cheek now, and a break in her voice — ‘ where all 
who ask may have it ; — and that it bids me to part from him, and to 
see him no more. We met in the prison for the last time — at least 
for years to come. It may be, in years hence, when — when our 
knees and our tears and our contrition have changed our sinful 
hearts, sir, and wrought our pardon, we may meet again — but not 
now. After what has passed, I could not bear to see him. I wish 
him well, sir ; but I wish him farewell too ; and if he has that — • 
that regard towards us which he speaks of, I beseech him to prove 
it by obeying me in this.’ 

“‘I shall break the young man’s heart, madam, by this hard 
sentence,’ ” Mr. Steele said. 

“ The lady shook her head,” continued my kind scholar. “ ‘ The 
hearts of young men, Mr. Steele, are not so made,’ she said. ‘ Mr. 
Esmond will find other — other friends. The mistress of this house 
has relented very much towards the late lord’s son,’ she added with 
a blush, ‘and has promised me, — that is, has promised that she 
will care for his fortune. Whilst I live in it, after the horrid, horrid 
deed which has passed, Castlewood must never be a home to him — 
never. Nor would I have him write to me — except — no — I would 
have him never write to me, nor see him more. Give him, if you will, 
my parting Hush ! not a word of this before my daughter.’ 

“ Here the fair Beatrix entered from the river, with her cheeks 
flushing with health, and looking only the more lovely and fresh for 
the mourning habiliments which she wore. And my Lady Vis- 
countess said — 

“ ‘ Beatrix, this is Mr. Steele, gentleman-usher to the Prince’s 
Highness. When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Steeled’ I 
hope thou wilt be out of prison for the first night, Harry.” 

The sentimental Captain concluded his sad tale, saying, “ Faith, 
the beauty of Jilia pulcrior drove pndcram matrem out of my 
head ! and yet as I came down the river, and thought about the 
pair, the pallid dignity and exquisite grace of the matron had the 
uppermost, and I thought her even more noble than the virgin ! ” 

The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with 
comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor 


OUR LIFE IN NEWGATE 


165 


wretches there (his insensibility to their misery, their gaiety still 
more frightful, their curses and blasphemy, hath struck with a kind 
of shame since — as proving how selfish, during his imprisonment, 
his own particular grief was, and how entirely the thoughts of it 
absorbed him) : if the three gentlemen lived well under the care of 
the Warden of Newgate, it was because they paid well ; and indeed 
the cost at the dearest ordinary or the grandest tavern in London 
could not have furnished a longer reckoning, than our host of the 
“ Handcuff Inn ” — as Colonel Westbirry called it. Our rooms were 
the three in the gate over Newgate — on the second storey looking up 
Newgate Street towards Cheapside and Paul’s Church. And we 
had leave to walk on the roof, and could see thence Smithfield and 
the Bluecoat Boys’ School, Gardens, and the Chartreux, where, as 
Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the Scholar and his friend Tom 
Tusher had had their schooling. 

Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy 
reckoning which my landlord brought to his guests once a week : 
for he had but three pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the 
duel, when the gentlemen were at cards, and offered to play five. 
But whilst he was yet ill at the Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood 
had visited him there, and before his trial, there came one in an 
orange-tawny coat and blue lace, the livery which the Esmonds 
always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond, which 
contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a counsel had been 
appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming 
whenever he needed it. 

’Twas a queer letter from the scholar as she was, or as she 
called herself : the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood, written in the 
strange barbarous French which she and many other fine ladies of 
that time — witness her Grace of Portsmouth — employed. Indeed, 
spelling was not an article of general commodity in the world then, 
and my Lord Marlborough’s letters can show that he, for one, had 
but a little share of this part of grammar : — 

“Mong Coussin,” my Lady Viscountess Dowager wrote, “je 
scay que vous vous etes bravement batew et grievement bldssay — du 
costd de feu M. le Vicomte. M. le Compte de Varique ne se playt 
qua parlay de vous : M. de Moon au^y. II di que vous avay voulew 
vous bastre avecque luy — que vous estes plus fort que luy fur 
I’ayscrimme — quil’y a surtout certaine Botte que vous scavay quil 
n’a jammay sceu pariay : et que e’en eut fay de luy si vouseluy 
vous vous fussiay battews ansanib. Aincy ce pauv Vicompte est 
mort. Mort et peutayt — Mon coussin, mon coussin ! jay dans la 
tayste que vous n’estes quung pety Monst— angey que les Esmonds 


166 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


ong tousjours estd. La veuve est chay moy. J’ay reciiilly cet’ 
pauve famine. Elle est furieuse cent vous, allans tous les jours 
chercher ley Roy (d’icy) demandant k gran cri revanche pour son 
Mary. Elle ne veux voyre ni entende parlay de vous : pourtant 
elle ne fay qu’en parlay milfoy par jour. Quand vous seray hor 
prison venay me voyre. J’auray soing de vous. Si cette petite 
Prude veut se ddfaire'de song pety Monste (Hdlas je craing quil 
ne soy trotar !) je m’en chargeray. J’ay encor quelqu interay et 
quelques escus de costay. 

“La Veuve se raccommode avec Miladi Marlboro qui est tout 
pui9ante avecque la Princesse Anne. Cet dam sent^raysent pour la 
petite prude ; qui pourctant a un fi du mesme asge que vous savay. 

“En sortant de prisong venez icy. Je ne puy vous recevoir 
chaymoy k cause des mdchanset^s du monde, may pre du moy vous 
aurez logement. Isabelle, Viscomtesse d’Esmond.” 

Marchioness of Esmond this lady sometimes called herself, in 
virtue of that patent which had been given by the late King James 
to Harry Esmond’s father; and in this state she had her train 
carried by a knight’s wife, a cup and cover of assay to drink from, 
and fringed cloth. 

He who was of the same age as little Francis, whom we shall 
henceforth call Viscount Castlewood here, was H.R.H. the Prince 
of Wales, born in the same year and month with Frank, and just 
proclaimed, at Saint Germains, King of Great Britain, France, and 
Ireland. 


CHAPTER III 

/ TAKE THE QUEEN’S PAY IN QUIN’S REGIMENT 



HE fellow in the orange-tawny livery with blue lace and 


facings was in waiting when Esmond came out of prison, 


^ and, taking the young gentleman’s slender baggage, led the 
way out of that odious Newgate, and by Fleet Conduit, down to 
the Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they went up 
the river to Chelsey. Esmond thought the sun had never shone so 
bright ; nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple Garden, 
as they rowed by, looked like the garden of Eden to him, and the 
aspect of the quays, wharves, and buildings by the river, Somerset 
House, and Westminster (where the splendid new bridge was just 
beginning), Lambeth tower and palace, and that busy shining scene 
of the Thames swarming with boats and barges, filled his heart with 
pleasure and cheerfulness — as well such a beautiful scene might to 
one who had been a prisoner so long, and with so many dark 
thoughts deepening the gloom of his captivity. They rowed up at 
length to the pretty village of Chelsey, where the nobility have 
many handsome country houses ; and so came to my Lady Vis- 
countess’s house, a cheerful new house in the row facing the river, 
with a handsome garden behind it, and a pleasant look-out both 
towards Surrey and Kensington, where stands the noble ancient 
palace of the Lord Warwick, Harry’s reconciled adversary. 

Here in her Ladyship’s saloon, the young man saw again some 
of those pictures which had been at Castlewood, and which she had 
removed thence on the death of her lord, Harry’s father. Specially, 
and in the place of honoim, was Sir Peter Lely’s picture of the 
Honourable Mistress Isabella Esmond as Diana, in yellow satin, 
with a ’bow in her hand and a crescent in her forehead ; and dogs 
frisking about her. ’Twas painted about the time when royal 
Endymions were said to find favour with this virgin huntress ; and, 
as goddesses have youth perpetual, this one believed to the day of 
her death that she never grew older ; and always persisted in 
supposing the picture was still like her. 

After he had been shown to her room by the groom of the 
chamber, who filled many offices besides in her Ladyship’s modest 


168 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


household, and after a proper interval, his elderly goddess Diana 
vouchsafed to appear to the young man. A blackamoor in a 
Turkish habit, with red boots and a silver collar, on which the 
Viscountess’s arms were engraven, preceded her and bore her 
cushion ; then came her gentlewoman ; a little pack of spaniels 
barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress — then, 
behold, the Viscountess herself “dropping odours.” Esmond re- 
collected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his 
mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky 
grows redder and redder towards sunset, so, in the decline of her 
years, the cheeks of my Lady Dowager blushed more deeply. Her 
face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the brighter 
from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the ringlets 
which had been in fashion in King Charles’s time ; whereas the 
ladies of King William’s had head-dresses like the towers of Cybele. 
Her eyes gleamed out from the midst of this queer structure of 
paint, dyes, and pomatums. Such was my Lady Viscountess, 
Mr. Esmond’s father’s widow. 

He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relation- 
ship merited, and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once 
more kissed that hand, upon the trembling knuckles of which 
glittered a score of rings — remembering old times when that 
trembling hand made him tremble. “Marchioness,” says he, 
bowing, and on one knee, “is it only the hand I may have the 
honour of saluting 1” For, accompanying that inward laughter, 
which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce 
in the young man, there was good-will too, and the kindness of 
consanguinity. She had been his father’s wife, and was his grand- 
father’s daughter. She had suffered him in old day’s, and was 
kind to him now after her fashion. And now that bar-sinister 
was removed from Esmond’s thought, and that secret opprobrium 
no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel family ties and 
own them — perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had made, 
and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, 
and only prevented by his own magnanimity from advancing his 
claim. 

At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor 
patron on his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he 
had felt an independency which he had never known before, and 
which since did not desert him. So he called his old aunt 
Marchioness, but with an air as if he was the Marquis of Esmond 
who so addressed her. 

Did she read in the young gentleman’s eyes, which had now no 
fear of hers or their superannuated authority, that he knew or 


I SPEAK MY MIND 


169 

suspected the truth about his birth 1 She gave a start of surprise 
at his altered manner : indeed, it was quite a different bearing to 
that of the Cambridge student who had paid her a visit two years 
since, and whom she had dismissed with five pieces sent by the 
groom of the chamber. She eyed him, then trembled a little more 
than was her wont, perhaps, and said, “Welcome, cousin,” in a 
frightened voice. 

His resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different, 
namely, so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth 
was not known to him ; but he suddenly and rightly determined on 
a different course. He asked that her Ladyship’s attendants should 
be dismissed, and when they were private : “ Welcome, nephew, at 
least, madam, it should be,” he said. “ A great wrong has been 
done to me and to you, and to my poor mother who is no more.” 

“ I declare before Heaven that I was guiltless of it,” she cried 
out, giving up her cause at once. “It was your wicked father 
who ” 

“Who brought this dishonour on our family,” says Mr. Esmond. 
“ I know it full well. I want to disturb no one. Those who are 
in present possession have been my dearest benefactors, and are 
quite innocent of intentional wrong to me. The late lord, my dear 
patron, knew not the truth until a few months before his death, 
when Father Holt brought the news to him.” 

“ The wretch ! he had it in confession ! he had it in confession ! ” 
cried out the Dowager Lady. 

“Not so. He learned it elsewhere as well as in confession,” Mr. 
Esmond answered. “ My father, when wounded at the Boyne, 
told the truth to a French priest, who was in hiding after the 
battle, as well as to the priest there, at whose house he died. This 
gentleman did not think fit to divulge the story till he met with Mr. 
Holt at Saint Omer’s. And the latter kept it back for his own 
purpose, and until he had learned whether my mother was alive or 
no. She is dead years since, my poor patron told me with his 
dying breath, and I doubt him not. I do not know even whether 
I could prove a marriage. I would not if I coidd. I do not care 
to bring shame on our name, or grief upon those whom I love, how- 
ever hardly they may use me. My father’s son, madam, won’t 
aggravate the wrong my father did you. Continue to be his widow, 
and give me your kindness. ’Tis all I ask from you ; and I shall 
never speak of this matter again.” 

“ Mais vous etes un noble jeune homme ! ” breaks out my Lady, 
speaking, as usual with her when she was agitated, in the French 
language. 

“Noblesse oblige,” says Mr. Esmond, making her a low bow. 


170 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND | 

11 

“ There are those alive to whom, in return for their love to me, I ^ 

often fondly said I would give my life away. Shall I be their j] 

enemy now, and quarrel about a title '? What matters who has it ? 
’Tis with the family still.” ■ 

“ What can there be in that little prude of a woman that makes | 

men so raffoler about her ? ” cries out my Lady Dowager. “ She , 

was here for a month petitioning the King. She is pretty, and well ' 

conserved ; but she has not the bel air. In his late Majesty’s Court i 

all the men pretended to admire her, and she was no better than a j 

little wax doll. She is better now, and looks the sister of her | 

daughter ; but what mean you all by bepraising her ? Mr. Steele, 
who was in waiting on Prince Ceorge, seeing her with her two 
children going to Kensington, writ a poem about her, and says he 
shall wear her colours, and dress in black for the future. Mr. 
Congreve says he will write a ‘ Mourning Widow,’ that shall be 
better than his ‘ Mourning Bride.’ Though their husbands quarrelled 
and fought when that wretch Churchill deserted the King (for which 
he deserved to be hung). Lady Marlborough has again gone wild 
about the little widow ; insulted me in my own drawing-room, by 
saying that ’twas not the old widow, but the young Viscountess, she 
had come to see. Little Castlewood and little Lord Churchill are 
to be sworn friends, and have boxed each other twice or thrice like 
brothers already. ’Twas that wicked young Mohun who, coming 
back from the provinces last year, where he had disinterred her, 
raved about her all the winter ; said she was a pearl set before 
swine ; and killed poor stupid Frank. The quarrel was all about 
his wife. I know ’twas all about her. Was there anything between 
her and Mohun, nephew? Tell me now — was there anything? 
About yourself, I do not ask you to answer questions.” 

Mr. Esmond blushed up. “ My Lady’s virtue is like that of 
a saint in heaven,” he cried out. 

“ Eh ! mon neveu. Many saints get to heaven after having a 
deal to repent of. I believe you are like all the rest of the fools, and 
madly in love with her.” 

“ Indeed, I loved and honoured her before all the world,” 
Esmond answered. I take no shame in that.” 

“ And she has shut her door on you — given the living to that 
horrid young cub, son of that horrid old bear, Tusher, and says she 
will never see you more. Monsieur mon neveu — we are all like 
that. When I was a young woman, I’m positive that a thousand 
duels were fought about me. And when poor Monsieur de Souchy 
drowned himself in the canal at Bruges because I danced with Count 
Springbock, I couldn’t squeeze out a single tear, but danced till five 
o’clock the next morning. ’Twas the Count — no, ’twas my Lord 


I JOIN QUIN’S REGIMENT 171 

Ormond that played the fiddles, and his Majesty did me the honour 
of dancing all night with me. How you are gi’own ! You have 
got the hel air. You are a black man. Our Esmonds are all 
black. The little prude’s son is fair ; so was his father — fair and 
stupid. You were an ugly little wretch when you came to 
Castle wood — you were all eyes, like a young crow. We intended 
you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt — how he used to 
frigliten me when I was ill ! I have a comfortable director now — 
the Abb^ Douillette — a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays 
always. My cook is a devout pious man. You, of course, are 
of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of Orange is 
very ill indeed.” 

In this way the old Dowager rattled on remorselessly to Mr. 
Esmond, who was quite astounded with her present volubility, con- 
trasting it with her former haughty behaviour to him. But she had 
taken him into favour for the moment, and chose not only to 
like him, as far as her nature permitted, but to be afraid of him ; 
and he found himself to be as familiar with her now as a young 
man, as, when a boy, he had been timorous and silent. She was 
as good as her word respecting him. She introduced him to her 
company, of which she entertained a good deal — of the adherents of 
King James of course — and a great deal of loud intriguing took 
place over her card-tables. She presented Mr. Esmond as her 
kinsman to many persons of honour ; she supplied him not illiberally 
with money, which he had no scruple in accepting from her, con- 
sidering the relationship whi(;h he bore to her, and the sacrifices 
which he himself was making in behalf of the family. But he had 
made up his mind to continue at no woman’s apron-strings longer ; 
and perhaps had cast about how he should distinguish himself, and 
make himself a name, which his singidar fortune had denied him. 
A discontent with his former bookish life and quietude, — -a bitter 
feeling of revolt at that slavery in which he had chosen to confine 
himself for the sake of those whose hardness towards liim made his 
heart bleed, — a restless wish to see men and the world, — led him 
to think of the military profession : at any rate, to desire to see 
a few campaigns, and accordingly he pressed his new patroness to 
get him a pair of colours ; and one day had the honour of finding 
himself appointed an ensign in Colonel Quin’s regiment of Fusileers 
on the Irish establishment. 

Mr. Esmond’s commission was scarce three weeks old when that 
accident befell King William which ended the life of the greatest, 
the wisest, the bravest, and most clement sovereign whom England 
ever knew. ’Twas the fashion of the hostile party to assail this 
great Prince’s reputation during his life ; but the joy which they 


172 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and all his enemies in Europe showed at his death, is a proof of the i 
terror in which they held him. Young as Esmond was, he was 
wise enough (and generous enough too, let it be said) to scorn that 
indecency of gratulation which broke out amongst the followers j 
of King James in London, upon the death of this illustrious prince, 
this invincible warrior, this wise and moderate statesman. Loyalty 
to the exiled king’s family was traditional, as has been said, in that 
house to which Mr. Esmond belonged. His father’s widow had j 
all her hopes, her sympathies, recollections, prejudices, engaged on 
King James’s side ; and was certainly as noisy a conspirator as ever ( 
asserted the King’s rights, or abused his opponent’s, over a quadrille j 
table or a dish of bohea. Her Ladyship’s house swarmed with eccle- 
siastics, in disguise and out; whilst tale-bearers from St. Germains ; j 
and quidnuncs that knew the last news from Versailles : nay, the | 
exact force and number of the next expedition which the French King 
was to send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the Prince 
of Orange, his army, and his court. She had received the Duke 
of Berwick when he landed here in ’96. She kept the glass he 
drank from, vowing she never would use it till she drank King 
James the Third’s health in it on his Majesty’s return; she had 
tokens from the Queen, and relics of the saint who, if the story 
was true, had not always been a saint as far as she and many others 
were concerned. She believed in the miracles wrought at his tomb, 
and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures effected by 
the blessed King’s rosaries, the medals which he wore, the locks 
of his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous 
tales which the credulous old woman told him. There was the 
Bishop of Autun, that was healed of a malady he had for forty 
years, and which left him after he said mass for the repose of the 
King’s soul. There was Monsieur Marais, a surgeon in Auvergne, 
who had a palsy in both his legs, which was cured through the 
King’s intercession. There was Philip Pitet, of the Benedictines, 
who had a suffocating cough, which well-nigh killed him, but he 
besought relief of Heaven through the merits and intercession of 
the blessed King, and he straightway felt a profuse sweat breaking 
out all over him, and was recovered perfectly. And there was 
the wife of Monsieur Lepervier, dancing-master to the Duke of Saxe 
Gotha, who was entirely eased of a rheumatism by the King’s inter- 
cession, of which miracle there could be no doubt, for her surgeon 
and his apprentice had given their testimony, under oath, that they 
did not in any way contribute to the cure. Of these tales, and a 
thousand like them, Mr. Esmond believed as much as he chose. 

His kinswoman’s greater faith had swallow for them all. 

The English High Church party did not adopt these legends. 


JACOBITES ALL 


173 


Blit truth and honour, as they thought, bound them to the exiled 
King’s side ; nor had the banished family any warmer supporter 
than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was 
brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps 
than my Lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he 
might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of 
thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she 
chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance 
to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King 
William for interest’s sake would have been a monstrous hypocrisy 
and treason. Her pure conscience could no more have consented 
to it than to a theft, a forgery, or any other base action. Lord 
Castlewood might have been won over, no doubt, but his wife never 
could : and he submitted his conscience to hers in this case as he 
did in most others, when he was not tempted too sorely. And it 
was from his affection and gratitude most likely, and from that 
eager devotion for his mistress which characterised all Esmond’s 
youth, that the young man subscribed to this, and other articles of 
faith, which his fond benefactress sent him. Had she been a Whig, 
he had been one ; had she followed Mr. Fox, and turned Quaker, 
no doubt he would have abjured ruffles and a periwig, and have 
forsworn swords, lace-coats, and clocked stockings. In the scholars’ 
boyish disputes at the University, where parties ran very high, 
Esmond was noted as a Jacobite, and very likely from vanity as 
much as affection took the side of his family. 

Almost the whole of the clergy of the country and more than 
a half of the nation were on this side. Ours is the most loyal 
people in the world surely ; we admire our kings, and are faithful 
to them long after they have ceased to be true to us. ’Tis a wonder 
to any one who looks back at the history of the Stuart family to 
think how they kicked their crowns away from them ; how they 
flung away chances after chances ; what treasures of loyalty they 
dissipated, and how fatally they were bent on consummating their 
own ruin. If ever men had fidelity, ’twas they; if ever men 
squandered opportunity, ’twas they ; and, of all the enemies they 
had, they themselves were the most fatal.* 

When the Princess Anne succeeded, the wearied nation was glad 
enough to cry a truce from all these wars, controversies, and con- 
spiracies, and to accept in the person of a Princess of the blood 
royal a compromise between the parties into which the country was 
divided. The Tories could serve under her with easy consciences ; 

* TTOTTOI, otop b-i) PV deovs §p0T0l ahibuPTai' 

7)fxiwp yap <f>a<ri kolk ?p.p.€Pai, oi Si Kai avTol 
ff<prj(np aracrdaXiriaiP vwip p.bpOP &\ye ix^v<Ti.v. 


174 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

though a Tory herself, she represented the triumph of the Whig 
opinion. The people of England, always liking that their Princes 
should be attached to their own families, were pleased to think the 
Princess was faithful to hers ; and up to the very last day and 
hour of her reign, and but for that fatality which he inherited from 
his fathers along with their claims to the English crown. King 
James the Third might have worn it. But he neither knew how to 
wait an opportunity, nor to use it when he had it ; he was venture- 
some when he ought to have been cautious, and cautious when he 
ought to have dared everything. ’Tis with a sort of rage at his 
inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do the Fates 
deal more specially with kings than with common men ? One is 
apt to imagine so, in considering the history of that royal race, in 
whose behalf so much fidelity, so much valour, so much blood were 
desperately and bootlessly expended. 

The King dead then, the Princess Anne (ugly Anne Hyde’s 
daughter, our Dowager at Chelsey called her) was proclaimed by 
trumpeting heralds all over the town from Westminster to Ludgate 
Hill, amidst immense jubilations of the people. 

Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the Garter, 
and to be Captain-General of her Majesty’s forces at home and 
abroad. This appointment only inflamed the Dowager’s rage, or, 
as she thought it, her fidelity to her rightful sovereign. The 
Princess is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who 
comes into my drawing-room and insults me to my face. What can 
come to a country that is given over to such a woman ? ” says the 
Dowager. “ As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord Marlborough, 
he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has 
had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble. ’Tis 
all over with the country when it has got into the clutches of such 
wretches as these.” 

Esmond’s old kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way ; 
but some good fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in 
great need of it, by the advancement of these famous personages, 
who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their 
favour. Before Mr. Esmond left England in the month of August, 
and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined his regiment, 
and was busy at drill, learning the practice and mysteries of the 
musket and pike, he heard that a pension on the Stamp Office had 
been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the young Idistress 
Beatrix was also to be taken into Court. So much good, at least, 
had come of the poor widow’s visit to London, not revenge upon 
her husband’s enemies, but reconcilement to old friends, who pitied, 
and seemed inclined to serve her. As for the comrades in prison 


MY COMRADES IN MISFORTUNE 


175 


and the late misfortune, Colonel Westbury was with the Captain- 
General gone to Holland; Captain Macartney was now at Ports- 
mouth, with his regiment of Fusileers and the force under command 
of his Grace the Duke of Ormond, bound for Spain it was said ; my 
Lord Warwick was returned home ; and Lord Mohun, so far from 
being punished for the homicide which had brought so much grief 
and change into the Esmond family, was gone in company of my 
Lord Macclesfield’s splendid embassy to the Elector of Hanovei*, 
carrying the Garter to his Highness, and a complimentary letter 
from the Queen. 


CHAPTER IV 

RECAPITULATIONS 


F rom such fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history 
by the broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse 
and struggling in the last pangs of dissolution, Mr. Esmond 
had been made to understand so far, that his mother was long since 
dead ; and so there could be no question as regarded her or her 
honour, tarnished by her husband’s desertion and injury, to influ- 
ence her son in any steps which he might take either for prosecuting 
or relinquishing his own just claims. It appeared from my poor 
Lord’s hurried confession, that he had been made acquainted with 
the real facts of the case only two years since, when Mr. Holt 
visited him, and would have implicated him in one of those many 
conspiracies by which the secret leaders of King James’s party in 
this country were ever endeavouring to destroy the Prince of Orange’s 
life or power ; conspiracies so like mirrder, so cowardly in the means 
used, so wicked in the end, that our nation has sure done well in 
throwing off all allegiance and fidelity to the unhappy family that 
could not vindicate its right except by such treachery — by such 
dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs against King 
William that were no more honourable than the ambushes of cut- 
throats and footpads. ’Tis humiliating to think that a great Prince, 
possessed of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause, 
should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons 
as are proved by the unfortunate King James’s own warrant and 
sign-manual given to his supporters in this country. What he and 
they called levying war was, in truth, no better than instigating 
murder. The noble Prince of Orange burst magnanimously through 
those feeble meshes of conspiracy in which his enemies tried to 
envelop him : it seemed as if their cowardly daggers broke upon the 
breast of his undaunted resolution. After King James’s death, the 
Queen and her people at St. Germains — priests and women for the 
most part — continued their intrigues in behalf of the young Prince, 
James the Third, as he was called in France and by his party here 
(this Prince, or Chevalier de St. George, was born in the same year 
with Esmond’s young pupil Frank, my Lord Viscount’s son) ; and 


177 


“THE CURSE OF KINGS” 

the Prince’s affairs, being in the hands of priests and women, were 
conducted as priests and women will conduct them, — artfully, cruelly, 
feebly, and to a certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuits’ story 
I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ : the artfullest, the 
wisest, the most toilsome and dexterous plot-builders in the world^ — 
there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks 
their flimsy ediflce down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. 
Mr. Swift hath flnely described that passion for intrigue, that 
love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, 
hangers-on of weak courts. ’Tis the nature of such to hate and 
envy the strong, and conspire their ruin ; and the conspiracy succeeds 
very well, and everything presages the satisfactory overthrow of the 
great victim ; until one day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the 
little vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah ! the 
Irish soldiers might well say after the Boyne, “ Change kings with 
us, and we will fight it over again.” Indeed, the fight was not fair 
between the two. ’Twas a weak, priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, 
with such puny allies and weapons as his own poor nature led him 
to choose, contending against the schemes, the generalship, the 
wisdom, and the heart of a hero. 

On one of these many coward’s errands then (for, as I view 
them now, I can call them no less), Mr. Holt had come to my 
Lord at Castle wood, proposing some infallible plan for the Prince of 
Orange’s destruction, in which my Lord Viscount, loyalist as he 
was, had indignantly refused to join. As far as Mr. Esmond could 
gather from his dying words. Holt came to my Lord with a plan of 
insurrection, and offer of the renewal, in his person, of that marquis’s 
title which King James had conferred on the preceding viscount; 
and on refusal of this bribe, a threat was made, on Holt’s part, to 
upset my Lord Viscount’s claim to his estate and title of Castlewood 
altogether. To back this astounding piece of intelligence, of which 
Henry Esmond’s patron now had the first light. Holt came armed 
with the late lord’s dying declaration, after the affair of the Boyne, 
at Trim, in Ireland, made both to the Irish priest and a French 
ecclesiastic of Holt’s order, that was with King James’s army. Holt 
showed, or pretended to show, the marriage certificate of the late 
Viscount Esmond with my mother, in the city of Brussels, in the 
year 1679, when the Viscount, then Thomas Esmond, was serving 
with the English army in Flanders ; he could show, he said, that 
this Gertrude,, deserted by her husband long since, was alive, and 
a professed nun in the year 1685, at Brussels, in which year Thomas 
Esmond married his uncle’s daughter Isabella, now called Viscountess 
Dowager of Castlewood; and leaving him, for twelve hours, to 
consider this astounding news (so the poor dying lord said), dis- 
7 M 


178 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

appeared with his papers in the mysterious way in which he came. 
Esmond knew how, well enough : by that window from which he 
had seen the Father issue : — but there was no need to explain to 
my poor Lord, only to gather from his parting lips the words which 
he would soon be able to utter no more. 

Ere the twelve hours were over. Holt himself was a prisoner, 
implicated in Sir John Fenwick’s conspiracy, and locked up at 
Hexton first, whence he was transferred to the Tower ; leaving the 
poor Lord Viscount, w'ho was not aware of the other’s being taken, 
in daily apprehension of his return, when (as my Lord Castlewood 
declared, calling God to witness, and with tears in his dying eyes) 
it had been his intention at once to give up his estate and his title 
to their proper owner, and to retire to his own house at Walcote 
with his family. “And would to God I had done it,” the poor 
lord said. “ I would not be here now, w^ounded to death, a miser- 
able, stricken man ! ” 

My Lord waited day after day, and, as may be supposed, no 
messenger came ; but at a month’s end Holt got means to convey to 
him a message out of the Tower, which was to this effect : that he 
should consider all unsaid that had been said, and that things were 
as they were. 

“ I had a sore temptation,” said my poor Lord. “ Since I had 
come into this cursed title of Castlewood, which hath never prospered 
with me, I have spent far more than the income of that estate, and 
my paternal one too. I calculated all my means down to the last 
shilling, and found I never could pay you back, my poor Harry, 
whose fortune I had had for ten years. My wife and children must 
have gone out of the house dishonoured, and beggars. God knows, 
it hath been a miserable one for me and mine. Like a coward, I 
clung to that respite which Holt gave me. I kept the truth from 
Rachel and you. I tried to win money of Mohim, and only plunged 
deeper into debt ; I scarce dared look thee in the face when I saw 
thee. This sword hath been hanging over my head these two years. 
I swear I felt happy when Mohun’s blade entered my side.” 

After lying ten months in the Tower, Holt, against whom 
nothing could be found except that he was a Jesuit priest, known 
to be in King James’s interest, was put on shipboard by the incor- 
rigible forgiveness of King William, who promised him, however, a 
hanging if ever he should again set foot on English shore. More 
than once, whilst he was in prison himself, Esmond had thought 
where those papers could be which the Jesuit had shown to his 
patron, and which had such an interest for himself. They were 
not found on Mr. Holt’s person when that Father was apprehended, 
for had such been the case my Lords of the Council had seen them, 


OLD PASTOUREAU’S GRAVE 179 

and this family history had long since been made public. However, 
Esmond cared not to seek the papers. His resolution being taken ; 
his poor mother dead ; what matter to him that documents existed 
proving his right to a title which he was determined not to claim, 
and of which he vowed never to deprive that family which he loved 
best in the world ? Perhaps he took a greater pride out of his sacri- 
fice than he would have had in those honours which he was resolved 
to forego. Again, as long as these titles were not forthcoming, 
Esmond’s kinsman, dear young Francis, was the honourable ancl 
undisputed owner of the Castlewood estate and title. The mere 
word of a Jesuit could not overset Frank’s right of occupancy, and 
so Esmond’s mind felt actually at ease to think the papers were 
missing, and in their absence his dear mistress and her son the 
lawful Lady and Lord of Castlewood. 

Very soon after his liberation, Mr. Esmond made it his business 
to ride to that village of Ealing where he had passed his earliest 
years in this country, and to see if his old guardians were still alive 
and inhabitants of that place. But the only relique which he found 
of old M. Pastoureau was a stone in the churchyard, which told 
that Athanasius Pastoiu’eau, a native of Flanders, lay there buried, 
aged 87 years. The old man’s cottage, which Esmond perfectly 
recollected, and the garden (where in his childhood he had passed 
many hours of play and reverie, and had many a beating from his 
termagant of a foster-mother) were now in the occupation of quite 
a different family ; and it was with difficulty that he could learn in 
the village what had come of Pastoureau’s widow and children. 
The clerk of the parish recollected her — the old man was scarce 
altered in the fourteen years that had passed since last Esmond set 
eyes on him. It appeared she had pretty soon consoled herself 
after the death of her old husband, whom she ruled over, by taking 
a new one younger than herself, who spent her money and ill-treated 
her and her children. The girl died ; one of the boys ’listed ; the 
other had gone apprentice. Old Mr. Rogers, the clerk, said he had 
heard that Mrs. Pastoureau was dead too. She and her husband 
had left Ealing this seven year ; and so Mr. Esmond’s hopes of gain- 
ing any information regarding his parentage from this family were 
brought to an end. He gave the old clerk a crown-piece for his 
news, smiling to think of the time when he and his little playfellows 
had slunk out of the churchyard or hidden behind the gravestones 
at the approach of this awful authority. 

Who was his mother ? What had her name been ? When did 
she die ? Esmond longed to find some one who could answer these 
questions to him, and thought even of putting them to his aunt the 
Viscountess^ who had innocently taken the name which belonged of 


180 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

right to Henry’s mother. But she knew nothing, or chose to know 
nothing, on this subject, nor, indeed, could Mr. Esmond press her 
much to speak on it. Father Holt was the only man who could en- 
lighten him, and Esmond felt he must wait until some fresh chance 
or new intrigue might put him face to face with his old friend, or 
bring that restless indefatigable spirit back to England again. 

The appointment to his ensigncy, and the preparations necessary 
for the campaign, presently gave the young gentleman other matters 
to think of. His new patroness treated him very kindly and liber- 
ally ; she promised to make interest and pay money, too, to get him 
a company speedily ; she bade him procure a handsome outfit, both of 
clothes and of arms, and was pleased to admire him when he made 
his first appearance in his laced scarlet coat, and to permit him to 
salute her on the occasion of this interesting investiture. “ Red,” 
says she, tossing up her old head, “hath always been the colour 
worn by the Esmonds.” And so her Ladyship wore it on her own 
cheeks very faithfully to the last. She would have him be dressed, 
she said, as became his father’s son, and paid cheerfully for his five- 
pound beaver, his black buckled periwig, and his fine holland shirts, 
and his swords, and his pistols mounted with silver. Since the day 
he was born, poor Harry had never looked such a fine gentleman ; 
his liberal stepmother fflled his purse with guineas too, some of 
which Captain Steele and a few choice spirits helped Harry to 
spend in an entertainment which Dick ordered (and, indeed, would 
have paid for, but that he had no money when the reckoning was 
called for ; nor would the landlord give him any more credit) at the 
“ Garter,” over against the gate of the Palace, in Pall Mall. 

The old Viscountess, indeed, if she had done Esmond any 
wrong formerly, seemed inclined to repair it by the present kindness 
of her behaviour : she embraced him copiously at parting, wept 
plentifully, bade him write by every packet, and gave him an 
inestimable relic, which she besought him to wear round his neck — 
a medal, blessed by I know not what pope, and worn by his late 
sacred Majesty King James. So Esmond arrived at his regiment 
with a better equipage than most young ofiicers coidd afford. He 
was older than most of his seniors, and had a further advantage 
which belenged but to very few of the army gentlemen in his day — 
many of whom could do little more than write their names — that 
he had read much, both at home and at the University, was master 
of two or three languages, and had that further education which 
neither books nor years will give, but which some men get from 
the silent teaching of Adversity. She is a great schoolmistress, as 
many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his hand out to her ferule, 
and whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair. 


CHAPTER V 


I GO ON THE VIGO BAY EXPEDITION, TASTE SALT-WATER 
AND SMELL POWDER 

T he first expedition in which Mr. Esmond had the honour to 
be engaged, rather resembled one of the invasions projected 
by the redoubted Captain Avory or Captain Kidd, than a 
war between crowned heads, carried on by generals of rank and 
honour. On the first day of July 1702, a great fleet, of a hundred 
and fifty sail, set sail from Spithead, under the command of Admiral 
Shovell, having on board 12,000 troops, with his Grace the Duke 
of Ormond as the Capt. -General of the expedition. One of these 
12,000 heroes having never been to sea before, or, at least, only once 
in his infancy, when he made the voyage to England from that 
unknown country where he was born — one of those 12,000 — the 
junior ensign of Colonel Quin’s regiment of Fusileers — was in a 
quite unheroic state of corporal prostration a few hours after sailing ; 
and an enemy, had he boarded the ship, would have had easy work 
of him. From Portsmouth we put into Plymouth, and took in 
fresh reinforcements. We were off’ Finisterre on the 31st of July, 
so Esmond’s table-book informs him : and on the 8th of August 
made the rock of Lisbon. By this time the Ensign was grown as 
bold as an admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be 
under fire for the first time — and under water too — his boat being 
swamped in the surf in Toros Bay, where the troops landed. The 
ducking of his new coat was all the harm the young soldier got in 
this expedition, for, indeed, the Spaniards made no stand before our 
troops, and were not in strength to do so. 

But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New 
sights of nature, by sea and land — a life of action, beginning now 
for the first time — occupied and excited the young man. The many 
accidents and the routine of shipboard — the military duty — the new 
acquaintances, both of his comrades in arms and of the officers of the 
ffeet — served to cheer and occupy his mind, and waken it out of that 
selfish depression into which his late unhappy fortunes had plunged 
him. He felt as if the ocean separated him from his past care, and 
welcomed the new era of life which was dawning for him. Wounds 


182 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-tweiity ; hopes revive daily ; and 
courage rallies in spite of a man. Perhaps, as Esmond thought of 
his late despondency and melancholy, and how irremediable it had 
seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was 
almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful. 

To see with one’s own eyes men and countries, is better than 
reading all the books of travel in the world : and it was with extreme 
delight and exultation that the young man found himself actually on 
his grand tour, and in the view of people and cities which he had 
read about as a boy. He beheld war for the first time — the pride, 
pomp, and circumstance of it, at least, if not much of the danger. 
He saw actually, and with his own eyes, those Spanish cavaliers and 
ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in that immortal story of 
Cervantes, which had been the delight of his youthful leisure. ’Tis 
forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those scenes, but they 
remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when first he saw them 
as a young man. A cloud, as of grief, that had lowered over him, 
and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear 
away from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign. His 
energies seemed to awaken and to expand under a cheerful sense of 
freedom. Was his heart secretly glad to have escaped from that 
fond but ignoble bondage at home 1 Was it that the inferiority to 
which the idea of his base birth had compelled him, vanished with 
the knowledge of that secret, which though, perforce, kept to him- 
self, was yet enough to cheer and console him % At any rate, young 
Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad little 
dependant of the kind Castlewood household, and the melancholy 
student of Trinity Walks ; discontented with his fate, and with the 
vocation into which that drove him, and thinking, with a secret 
indignation, that the cassock and bands, and the very sacred office 
with which he had once proposed to invest himself, were, in fact, but 
marks of a servitude which was to continue all his life long. For, 
disguise it as he might to himself, he had all along felt that to be 
Castlewood’s chaplain was to be Castlewood’s inferior still, and that 
his life was but to be a long, -hopeless servitude. So, indeed, he was 
far from grudging his old friend Tom Tusher’s good fortune (as Tom, 
no doubt, thought it). Had it been a mitre and Lambeth which his 
friends offered him, and not a small living and a country parsonage, 
he would have felt as much a slave in one case as in the other, and 
was quite happy and thankful to be free. 

The bravest man I ever knew in the army, and who had been 
present in most of King William’s actions, as well as in the campaigns 
of the great Duke of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any 
achievement of his, except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up 


OUR COMMANDER’S PROCLAMATIONS 183 

a tree to reconnoitre the enemy, which feat he could not achieve on 
account of the horseman’s boots he wore ; and on another day that 
he was very nearly taken prisoner because of these jackboots, which 
prevented him from running away. The present narrator shall 
imitate this laudable reserve, and doth not intend to dwell upon his 
military exploits, which were in truth not very different from those 
of a thousand other gentlemen. This first campaign of Mr. Esmond’s 
lasted but a few days ; and as a score of books have been written 
concerning it, it may be dismissed very briefly here. 

When our fleet came within view of Cadiz, our commander sent 
a boat with a white flag and a' couple of officers to the Governor of 
Cadiz, Don Scipio de Brancaccio, with a letter from his Grace, in 
which he hoped that as Don Scipio had formerly served with the 
Austrians against the French, ’twas to be hoped that his Excellency 
would now declare himself against the French King, and for the 
Austrian, in the war between King Philip and King Charles. But 
his Excellency, Don Scipio, prepared a reply, in which he announced 
that, having served his former king with honour and fidelity, he 
hoped to exhibit the same loyalty and devotion towards his present 
sovereign. King Philip V. ; and by the time this letter was ready, 
the two officers had been taken to see the town, and the Alameda, 
and the theatre, where bull-fights are fought, and the convents, where 
the admirable works of Don Bartholomew Murillo inspired one of them 
with a great wonder and delight — such as he had never felt before — 
concerning this divine art of painting; and these sights over, and 
a handsome refection and chocolate being served to the English 
gentlemen, they w^ere accompanied back to their shallop with every 
courtesy, and were the only two officers of the English army that 
saw at that time that famous city. 

The general tried the power of another proclamation on the 
Spaniards, in which he announced that we only came in the interest 
of Spain and King Charles, and for ourselves wanted to make no 
conquest nor settlement in Spain at all. But all this eloquence was 
lost upon the Spaniards, it would seem : the Captain-General of 
Andalusia would no more listen to us than the Governor of Cadiz ; 
and in reply to his Grace’s proclamation, the Marquis of Villadarias 
fired off another, which those who knew the Spanish thought rather 
the best of the two ; and of this number was Harry Esmond, whose 
kind Jesuit in old days had instructed him, and who now had the 
honour of translating for his Grace these harmless documents of war. 
There was a hard touch for his Grace, and, indeed, for other generals 
in her Majesty’s service, in the concluding sentence of the Don : 
“ That he and his council had the generous example of their ancestors 
to follow, who had never yet sought their elevation in the blood or 


184 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

in the flight of their kings. ‘ Mori pro patria ’ was his device, 
which the Duke might communicate to the Princess who governed 
England.” 

Whether the troops were angry at this repartee or no, ’tis certain 
something put them in a fury ; for, not being able to get possession 
of Cadiz, our people seized upon Port St. Mary’s and sacked it, 
burning down the merchants’ storehouses, getting drunk with the 
famous wines there, pillaging and robbing quiet houses and convents, 
murdering and doing worse. And the only blood which Mr. Esmond 
drew in this shameful campaign, was the knocking down an English 
sentinel with a half-pike, who was offering insult to a poor trembling 
nun. Is she going to turn out a beauty '? or a princess ? or perhaps 
Esmond’s mother that he had lost and never seen 1 Alas no : it 
was but a poor wheezy old dropsical woman, with a wart upon her 
nose. But having been early taught a part of the Roman religion, 
he never had the horror of it that some Protestants have shown, 
and seem to think to be a part of ours. 

After the pillage and plunder of St. Mary’s, and an assault upon 
a fort or two, the troops all took shipping, and finished their ex- 
pedition, at any rate, more brilliantly than it had begun. Hearing 
that the French fleet with a great treasure was in Vigo Bay, our 
Admirals, Rooke and Hopson, pursued the enemy thither ; the 
troops landed and carried the forts that protected the bay, Hopson 
passing the boom first on board his ship the Torhay, and the rest 
of the ships, English and Dutch, following him. Twenty ships 
were burned or taken in the port of Redondilla, and a vast deal 
more plunder than was ever accounted for ; but poor men before 
that expedition were rich afterwards, and so often was it found and 
remarked that the Vigo officers came home with pockets full of 
money, that the notorious Jack Shafto, who made such a figure at 
the coffee-houses and gaming-tables in London, and gave out that 
he had been a soldier at Vigo, owned, when he was about to be 
hanged, that Bagshot Heath had been his Vigo, and that he only 
spoke of La Redondilla to turn away people’s eyes from the real 
place where the booty lay. Indeed, Hounslow or Vigo — which 
matters much The latter was a bad business, though Mr. Addison 
did sing its praises in Latin. That honest gentleman’s muse had 
an eye to the main chance; and I doubt whether she saw much 
inspiration in the losing side. 

But though Esmond, for his part, got no share of this fabulous 
booty, one great prize which he had out of the campaign was, that 
excitement of action and change of scene, which shook off a great 
deal of his previous melancholy. He learnt at any rate to bear his 
fate cheerfully. He brought back a browned face, a heart resolute 


I KETURN TO ENGLAND 


185 


enough, and a little pleasant store of knowledge and observation, 
from that expedition, which was over with the autumn, when the 
troops were back in England again ; and Esmond giving up his 
post of secretary to General Lumley, whose command was over, and 
parting with that officer with many kind expressions of good-will 
on the General’s side, had leave to go to London, to see if he could 
push his fortunes any way further, and found himself once more in 
his dowager aunt’s comfortable quarters at Chelsey, and in greater 
favour than ever with the old lady. He propitiated her with a 
])resent of a comb, a fan, and a black mantle, such as the ladies of 
Cadiz wear, and which my Lady Viscountess pronounced became 
her style of beauty mightily. And she was greatly edified at hearing 
of that story of his rescue of the nun, and felt very little doubt 
but that her King James’s relic, which he had always dutifully worn 
in his desk, had kept him out of danger, and averted the shot of 
the enemy. My Lady made feasts for him, introduced him to more 
company, and pushed his fortunes with such enthusiasm and success, 
that she got a promise of a company for him through the Lady 
Marlborough’s interest, who was graciously pleased to accept of a 
diamond worth a couple of hundred guineas, which Mr. Esmond was 
enabled to present to her Ladyship through his aunt’s bounty, and 
who promised that she would take charge of Esmond’s fortune. He 
had the honour to make his appearance at the Queen’s Drawing- 
room occasionally, and to frequent my Lord Marlborough’s levies. 
The great man received the young one with very especial favour, so 
Esmond’s comrades said, and deigned to say that he had received the 
best reports of Mr. Esmond, both for courage and ability, whereon 
you may be sure the young gentleman made a profound bow, and 
expressed himself eager to serve under the most distinguished captain 
in the world. 

Whilst his business was going on thus prosperously, Esmond 
had his share of pleasure too, and made his appearance along with 
other young gentlemen at the coffee-houses, the theatres, and the 
Mall. He longed to hear of his dear mistress and her family: many 
a time, in the midst of the gaieties and pleasures of the town, his 
heart fondly reverted to them ; and often, as the young fellows of 
his society were making merry at the tavern, and calling toasts (as 
the fashion of that day was) over their wine, Esmond thought of 
persons — of two fair women, whom he had been used to adore 
almost — and emptied his glass with a sigh. 

By this time the elder Viscountess had grown tired again of the 
younger, and whenever she spoke of my Lord’s widow, ’twas in 
terms by no means complimentary towards that poor lady : the 
younger woman not needing her protection any longer, the elder 


186 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

abused her. Most of the family quarrels that I have seen in life 
(saving always those arising from money-disputes, when a division 
of twopence halfpenny will often drive the dearest relatives into war 
and estrangement) spring out of jealousy and envy. Jack and Tom, 
born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very cordially 
together, not until Jack is ruined, when Tom deserts him, but until 
Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can’t forgive. 
Ten times to one ’tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the 
other who is in fault. ’Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair, 
that sickens at Mrs. Tom’s new coach-and-six, cries out against her 
sister’s airs, and sets her husband against his brother. ’Tis Jack 
who sees his brother shaking hands with a lord (with whom Jack 
would like to exchange snuffboxes himself), that goes home and 
tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and no better than 
a sneak, parasite, and beggar on horseback. I remember how furious 
the coffee-house wits were with Dick Steele when he set up his 
coach and fine house at Bloomsbury; they began to forgive him 
when the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling 
Dick’s country house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or 
Dick in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was 
exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele : 
and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which 
was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent 
by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced clothes, fine furniture, 
and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and female, who clung to 
him. As, according to the famous maxim of Monsieur de Rochefou- 
cault, “ in our friends’ misfortunes there’s something secretly pleasant 
to us ; ” so, on the other hand, their good fortune is disagreeable. 
If ’tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, ’tis harder still for 
his friends to bear it for him ; and but few of them ordinarily can 
stand that trial : whereas one of the “ precious uses ” of adversity 
is, that it is a great reconciler ; that it brings back averted kindness, 
disarms animosity, and causes yesterday’s enemy to fling his hatred 
aside, and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days. There’s 
pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart and towards the 
same person. The rivalry stops when the competitor tumbles ; 
and, as I view it, we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable 
qualities of our humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and 
natural, and our kindness and meanness both manly. 

So you may either read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond’s 
two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had 
lost somewhat of its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her 
grievances against the other when the subject of them was no 
longer prosperous and enviable ; or we may say more benevolently 


THE DOWAGER LADY CASTLEWOOD 187 

(but the sum comes to the same figures, worked either way), that 
Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when Rachel 
was unhappy ; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow 
and her children, gave them shelter and friendship. The ladies 
were quite good friends as long as the weaker one needed a pro- 
tector. Before Esmond went away on his first campaign, his 
mistress was still on terms of friendship (though a poor little 
chit, a woman that' had evidently no spirit in her, &c.) with the 
elder Lady Castlewood; and Mistress Beatrix was allowed to be 
a beauty. 

But between the first year of Queen Anne’s reign and the 
second, sad changes for the worse had taken place in the two 
younger ladies, at least in the elder’s description of them. Rachel, 
Viscountess Castlewood, had no more face than a dumpling, and 
Mrs. Beatrix was grown quite coarse, and was losing all her 
beauty. Little Lord Blandford — (she never would call him Lord 
Blandford; his father was Lord Churchill — the King, whom he 
betrayed, had made him Lord Churchill, and he was Lord Churchill 
still) — might be making eyes at her; but his mother, that vixen 
of a Sarah Jennings, would never hear of such a folly. Lady 
Marlborough had got her to be a maid of honour at Court to the 
Princess, but she would repent of it. The widow Francis (she 
was but Mrs. Francis Esmond) was a scheming, artful, heartless 
hussy. She was spoiling her brat of a boy, and she would end 
by marrying her chaplain. 

“ What, Tusher ! ” cried Mr. Esmond, feeling a strange pang of 
rage and astonishment. 

“Yes — Tusher, my maid’s son; and who has got all the 
qualities of his father the lacquey in black, and his accomplished 
mamma the waiting-woman,” cries my Lady. “ What do you sup- 
pose that a sentimental widow, who will live down in that dingy 
dungeon of a Castlewood, w^here she spoils her boy, kills the poor 
with her drugs, has prayers twice a day, and sees nobody but the 
chaplain — what do you suppose she can do, mon cousin, but let 
the horrid parson, with his great square toes and hideous little 
green eyes, make love to her 'I Cela c’est vu, mon cousin. When 
I was a girl at Castlewood, all the chaplains fell in love with me — 
they’ve nothing else to do.” 

My Lady went on wdth more talk of this kind, though, in truth, 
Esmond had no idea of what she said further, so entirely did her 
first words occupy his thought. Were they true? Not all, nor 
half, nor a tenth part of what the garrulous old woman said, was 
true. Could this be so? No ear had Esmond for anything else, 
though his patroness chatted on for an hour. 


188 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND . 

Some young gentlemen of the town, with whom Esmond had 
made acquaintance, had promised to present him to that most 
charming of actresses, and lively and agreeable of women, Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, about whom Harry’s old adversary Mohun had drawn 
swords, a few years before my poor Lord and he fell out. The 
famous Mr. Congreve had stamped with his high approval, to the 
which there was no gainsaying, this delightful person : and she was 
acting in Dick Steele’s comedies and finally, and for twenty-four 
hours after beholding her, Mr. Esmond felt himself, or thought 
himself, to be as violently enamoured of this lovely brunette, as 
were a thousand other young fellows about the city. To have once 
seen her was to long to behold her again ; and to be offered the 
delightful privilege of her acquaintance, was a pleasure the very 
idea of which set the young lieutenant’s heart on fire. A man 
cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out 
that he too is five-and-twenty. A young fellow cannot be cast down 
by grief and misfortune ever so severe but some night he begins 
to sleep sound, and some day when dinner-time comes to feel 
hungry for a beefsteak. Time, youth and good health, new scenes 
and the excitement of action and a campaign, had pretty well 
brought Esmond’s mourning to an end; and his comrades said 
that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more. 
So when a party was made to dine at the “ Rose,” and go to the 
playhouse afterward, Esmond was as pleased as another to take 
his share of the bottle and the play. 

How was it that the old aunt’s news, or it might be scandal, 
about Tom Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in 
Tom’s old playfellow ? Hadn’t he sworn a thousand times in his 
own mind that the Lady of Castlewood, who had treated him with 
such kindness once, and then had left him so cruelly, was, and was 
to remain henceforth, indifferent to him for ever? Had his pride 
and his sense of justice not long since helped him to cure the pain 
of that desertion — was it even a pain to him now ? Why, but last 
night as he walked across the fields and meadows to Chelsey from 
Pall Mall, had he not composed two or three stanzas of a song, 
celebrating Bracegirdle’s brown eyes, and declaring them a thousand 
times more beautiful than the brightest blue ones that ever languished 
under the lashes of an insipid fair beauty ! But Tom Tusher ! Tom 
Tusher, the waiting-woman’s son, raising up his little eyes to his 
mistress ! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood’s widow ! 
Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry’s heart at the very notion ; 
the honour of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his 
duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart 
who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. ’Tis 


“A PANG OF JEALOUSY 


189 

true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could 
remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere, 
with xvorth and not hirth for a text : but Tom Tusher to take the 
place of the noble Castlewood^ — faugh ! ’twas as monstrous as King 
Hamlet’s widow taking off her weeds for Claudius. Esmond laughed 
at all widows, all wives, all women ; and were the banns about to 
be published, as no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at 
Wak^ote Church, Esmond swore that he would be present to shout 
No ! in the face of the congregation, and to take a private revenge 
upon the ears of the bridegroom. 

Instead of going to dinner then at the “ Rose ” that night, Mr. 
Esmond bade his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and 
was at Farnham, half-way on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off, 
before his comrades had got to their supper after the play. He 
bade his man give no hint to my Lady Dowager’s household of the 
expedition on which he was going : and as Chelsey was distant from 
London, the roads bad, and infested by footpads, and Esmond often 
in the habit, when engaged in a party of pleasure, of lying at a 
friend’s lodging in town, there was no need that his old aunt should 
be disturbed at his absence — indeed, nothing more delighted the old 
lady than to fancy that mon cousin, the incorrigible young sinner, 
was abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles’s. When she 
was not at her books of devotion, she thought Etheredge and Sedley 
very good reading. She had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester, 
Harry Jermyn, and Hamilton ; and if Esmond would but have run 
away with the wife even of a citizen, ’tis my belief she wmuld have 
pawned her diamonds (the best of them went to our Lady of Chaillot) 
to pay his damages. 

My Lord’s little house of Walcote — which he inhabited before 
he took his title and occupied the house of Castlewood — lies about 
a mile from Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote 
after my Lord’s death as a place always dear to her, and where her 
earliest and happiest days had been spent, cheerfuller than Castle- 
wood, which was too large for her straitened means, and giving her, 
too, the protection of the ex-Dean, her father. The young Viscount 
had a year’s schooling at the famous college there, with Mr. Tusher 
as his governor. So much news of them Mr. Esmond had had 
during the past year from the old Viscountess, his own father’s 
widow ; from the young one there had never been a word. 

Twice or thrice in his benefactor’s lifetime, Esmond had been to 
Walcote ; and now, taking but a couple of hours’ rest only at the 
inn on the road, he was up again long before daybreak, and made 
such good speed that he was at Walcote by two o’clock of the day. 
He rid to the end of the village, where he alighted and sent a man 


190 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


thence to Mr. Tusher, with a message that a gentleman from London 
would speak with him on urgent business. The messenger came 
back to say the Doctor was in town, most likely at prayers in the 
Cathedral. My Lady Viscountess was there too ; she always went 
to Cathedral prayers every day. 

The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond 
mounted again and rode on to the “ George ” ; whence he walked, 
leaving his grumbling domestic at last happy with a dinner, straight 
to the Cathedral. The organ was playing, the winter’s day was 
already growing grey, as he passed under the street-arch into the 
Cathedral yard, and made his way into the ancient solemn edifice. 


CHAPTER VI 

THE 2^TH DECEMBER 

T here was scarce a score of persons in the Cathedral beside 
the Dean and some of his clergy, and the choristers, young 
and old, that performed the beautiful evening prayer. But 
Mr. Tusher was one of the officiants, and read from the eagle in an 
authoritative voice, and a great black periwig ; and in the stalls, 
still in her black widow’s hood, sat Esmond’s dear mistress, her son 
by her side, very much gTown, and indeed a noble-looking youth, 
with his mother’s eyes, and his father’s curling brown hair, that fell 
over hSs, point de Venise — a pretty picture such as Vandyke might 
have painted. Monsieur Rigaud’s portrait of my Lord Viscount, 
done at Paris afterwards, gives but a French version of his manly, 
frank, English face. When he looked up there were two sapphire 
beams out of his eyes such as no painter’s palette has the colour to 
match, I think. On this day there was not much chance of seeing 
that particular beauty of my young Lord’s countenance; for the 
truth is, he kept his eyes shut for the most part, and, the anthem 
being rather long, was asleep. 

But the music ceasing, my Lord woke up, looking about him, 
and his eyes lighting on Mr. Esmond, who was sitting opposite him, 
gazing with no small tenderness and melancholy upon two persons 
who had so much of his heart for so many years, Lord Castlewood, 
with a start, pulled at his mother’s sleeve (her face had scarce been 
lifted from her book), and said, “ Look, mother ! ” so loud, that 
Esmond could hear on the other side of the church, and the old 
Dean on his throned stall. Lady Castlewood looked for an instant 
as her son bade her, and held up a warning finger to Frank; Esmond 
felt his whole face flush, and his heart throbbing, as that dear lady 
beheld him once more. The rest of the prayers were speedily over ; 
Mr. Esmond did not hear them ; nor did his mistress, very likely, 
whose hood went more closely over her face, and who never lifted 
her head again until the service was over, the blessing given, and 
Mr. Dean, and his procession of ecclesiastics, out of the inner 
chapel. 

Young Castlewood came clambering over the stalls before the 


192 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

clergy were fairly gone, and running up to Esmond, eagerly embraced 
him. “ My dear, dearest old Harry ! ” he said, “ are you come 
back ? Have you been to the wars ? You’ll take me with you 
when you go again] Why didn’t you write to us] Come to 
mother ! ” 

Mr. Esmond could hardly say more than a “ God bless you, my 
boy ! ” for his heart was very full and grateful at all this tenderness 
on the lad’s part; and he was as much moved at seeing Frank as 
he was fearful about that other interview which was now to take 
place : for he knew not if the widow would reject him as she had 
done so cruelly a year ago. 

“ It was kind of you to come back to us, Henry,” Lady Esmond 
said. “ I thought you might come.” 

“We read of the fleet coming to Portsmouth. Why did you 
not come fi'om Portsmouth ] ” Frank asked, or my Lord Viscount, 
as he now must be called. 

Esmond had thought of that too. He would have given one of 
his eyes so that he might see his dear friends again once more ; but 
believing that his mistress had forbidden him her house, he had 
obeyed her, and remained at a distance. 

“You had but to ask, and you knew I would be here,” he said. 

She gave him her hand, her little fair hand ; there was only 
her marriage ring on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of 
grief and estrangement was passed. They never had been separated. 
His mistress had never been out of his mind all that time. No, 
not once. No, not in the prison ; nor in the camp ; nor on shore 
before the enemy ; nor at sea under the stars of solemn midnight ; 
nor as he watched the glorious rising of the dawn : not even at the 
table, where he sat carousing with friends, or at the theatre yonder, 
where he tried to fancy that other eyes were brighter than hers. 
Brighter eyes there might be, and faces more beautiful, but none so 
dear — no voice so sweet as that of his beloved mistress, who had 
been sister, mother, goddess to him during his youth — goddess now 
no more, for he knew of her weaknesses ; and by thought, by suffer- 
ing, and that experience it brings, was older now than she ; but 
more fondly cherished as woman perhaps than ever she had been 
adored as divinity. What is it ] Where lies it ] the secret which 
makes one little hand the dearest of all] AVhoever can unriddle 
that mystery ] Here she was, her son by his side, his dear boy. 
Here she was, weeping and happy. She took his hand in both 
hers ; he felt her tears. It was a raptime of reconciliation. 

“ Here comes Squaretoes,” says Frank. “ Here’s Tusher.” 

Tusher, indeed, now appeared, creaking on his great heels. Mr. 
Tom had divested himself of his alb or surplice, and came forward 


AVE WALK HAND IN HAND I93 

habited in his cassock and great black periwig. How had Esmond 
ever been for a moinent jealous of this fellow ? 

“Give ns thy hand, Tom Tusher,” he said. The Chaplain 
made him a very low and stately bow. “ I am charmed to see 
Captain Esmond,” says he. “ My Lord and I have read the Reddas 
ineolumem precor, and applied it, I am sure, to you. You come 
back with Gaditanian laurels ; when I heard you were bound 
thither, I wished, I am sure, I was another Septimius. My Lord 
Viscount, your Lordship remembers Septimi, Gades aditure 
mecuni .? ” 

“There’s an angle of earth that I love better than Gades, 
Tusher,” says Mr. Esmond “ ’Tis that one where your reverence 
hath a parsonage, and where our youth was brought up.” 

“ A house that has so many sacred recollections to me,” says 
Mr. Tusher (and Harry remembered how Tom’s father used to flog 
him there) — “ a house near to that of my respected patron, my 
most honoured patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But, 
madam, the verger waits to close the gates on your Ladyship.” 

“ And Harry’s coming home to supper. Huzzay ! huzzay ! ” 
cries my Lord. “ Mother, I shall run home and bid Beatrix put 
her ribands on. Beatrix is a maid of honour, Harry. Such a fine 
set-up minx ! ” 

“ Your heart was never in the Church, Harry,” the widow said, 
in her sweet low tone, as they walked away together. (Now, it 
seemed they had never been parted, and again, as if they had been 
ages asunder.) “ I always thought you had no vocation that way ; 
and that ’twas a pity to shut you out from the world. You would 
but have pined and chafed at Castlewood : and ’tis better you should 
make a name for yourself. I often said so to my dear Lord. How 
he loved you ! ’Twas my Lord that made you stay with us.” 

“ I asked no better than to stay near you always,” said Mi’. 
Esmond. 

“ But to go was best, Harry. When the world cannot give 
peace, you will know where to find it; but one of your strong 
imagination and eager desires must try the world first before he 
tires of it. ^ ’Twas not to be thought of, or if it once was, it was 
only by my selfishness, that you should remain as chaplain to a 
country gentleman and tutor to a little boy. You are of the blood 
of the Esmonds, kinsman ; and that was always wild in youth. 
Look at Francis. He is but fifteen, and I scarce can keep him 
in my nest. His talk is all of war and pleasure, and he longs to 
ser\m in the next campaign. Perhaps he and the young Lord 
Churchill shall go the next. Lord Marlborough has been good to 
us. You know how kind they Avere in my misfortune. And so 

7 N 


194 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

was your— your fother’s widow. No one knows how good the 
world is, till grief comes to try us. ’Tis through iny Lady Marl- 
borough’s goodness that Beatrix hath her place at Court ; and Frank 
is under my Lord Chamberlain. And the dow^ager lady, your 
father’s widow, has promised to provide for you — has she not ? ” 

Esmond said, “Yes. As far as present favour went, Lady 
Castle wood was very good to him. And should her mind change,” 
he added gaily, “ as ladies’ minds will, I am stfong enough to bear 
my own burden, and make my way somehow. Not by the sword 
very likely. Thousands have a better genius for that than I, but 
there are many ways in which a young man of good parts and 
education can get on in the world; and I am pretty sure, one 
way or other, of promotion ! ” Indeed, he had found patrons 
already in the army, and amongst persons very able to serve him 
too ; and told his mistress of the flattering aspect of fortune. They 
walked as though they had never been parted, slowly, with the 
grey twilight closing round them. 

“And now we are drawing near to home,” she continued, “I 
knew you would come, Harry, if — if it was but to forgive me for 
having spoken unjustly to you after that horrid — horrid misfortune. 
I was half frantic with grief then when I saw you. And I know 
now — they have told me. That wretch, whose name I can never 
mention, even has said it : how you tried to avert the quarrel, and 
would have taken it on yourself, my poor child : but it was God’s 
will that I should be punished, and that my dear lord should fall.” 

“ He gave me his blessing on his deathbed,” Esmond said. 
“ Thank God for that legacy ! ” 

“ Amen, amen ! dear Henry,” said the lady, pressing his arm. 
“ I knew it. Mr. Atterbury, of St. Bride’s, who was called to him, 
told me so. And I thanked God, too, and in my prayers ever 
since remembered it.” 

“You had spared me many a bitter night, had you told me 
sooner,” Mr. Esmond said. 

“ I know it, I know it,” she answered, in a tone of such sweet 
humility, as made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared 
to reproach her. “ I know how wicked my heart has been ; and 
I have suffered too, my dear. I confessed to Mr. Atterbury — I 
must not tell any more. He — I said I would not write to you or 
go to you— and it was better even that, having parted, we should 
part. But I knew you would come back— I own that. That is 
no one’s faidt. And to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang 
it, ‘When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were like 
them that dream,’ I thought, yes, like them that dream — them that 
dream. And then it went, ‘ They that sow in tears shall reap in 


QUI SEMINANT IN LACRYMIS 195 

joy ; and lie that goetli forth and weepeth, shall doubtless come 
again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with liini ; ’ I looked np 
from the book, and saw you. I was not surprised wlien I saw you. 
I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round 
your head.” 

She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him. The 
moon was up by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky. He 
could see, for the first time now clearly, her sweet careworn face. 

“Do you know what day it is?” she continued. “It is the 
29th of December — it is your birthday ! But last year we did not 
drink it — no, no. My Lord was cold, and my Harry was likely to 
die : and my brain w^as in a fever ; and we had no wine. But now 
— now' you are come again, bringing your sheaves with you, my 
dear.” She burst into a wild flood of weeping as she spoke ; she 
laughed and sobbed on the young man’s heart, crying out wildly, 
“ bringing your sheaves with you — your sheaves with you ! ” 

As he had sometimes felt, gazing up from the deck at midnight 
into the boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of devout 
wonder at that endless brightness and beauty — in some such a way 
now, the depth of this pure devotion (which was, for the first time, 
revealed to him) quite smote upon him, and filled his heart with 
thanksgiving. Gracious God, who was he, weak and friendless 
creature, that such a love should be poured out u])on him ? Not 
in vain — not in vain has he lived — hard and thankless should he 
be to think so — that has such a treasure given him. What is 
ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity ? To be rich, to be 
famous ? What do these profit a year hence, when other names 
sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under the 
ground, along with idle titles engraven on your ccflin? But only 
true love lives after you — follows your memory with secret bless- 
ing — or precedes you, and intercedes for you. JS^on cmnis moriar 
— if dying, I yet live in a tender heart or tw o ; nor am lost and 
hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays 
for me. 

“ If — if ’tis so, dear lady,” Mr. Esmond said, “ why should I 
ever leave you? If God hath given me this great bcon— and near 
or far from me, as I know now, the heart of my dearest mistress 
follows me, let me have that blessing near me, nor ever part with 
it till death separate us. Come aw'ay — leave this Europe, this place 
wdiich has so many sad recollections for you. Begin a new life in 
a new world. My good Lord often talked of visiting that land in 
Virginia which King Charles gave us — gave his ancestor. Frank 
wall give us that. No man there will ask if there is a blot on my 
name, or inquire in the w oods what my title is.” 


195 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“And niy children — and my duty and my good fatlier, 
Henry ? ” slic broke out. “ He has none Imt me now ! for soon 
my sister will leave him, and the old man will be alone. He has 
conformed since the new Queen’s reign ; and here in Winchester, 
where they love liim, they have found a church for him. When the 
children leave me, I will stay with him. I cannot follow them into 
the great world, where their way lies — it scares me. They will 
come and visit me ; and you will, sometimes,- Henry — yes, some- 
times, as now, in the Holy Advent season, when I have seen and 
blessed you once more.” 

“ I would leave all to follow you,” said Mr. Esmond ; “ and can 
you not be as generous for me, dear lady ? ” 

“ Hush, boy ! ” she said, and it was with a mother’s sweet 
])laintive tone and look that she spoke. “ The world is beginning 
for you. For me I have been so weak and sinful that I must leave 
it, and pray out an expiation, dear Henry. Had we houses of religion 
as there were once, and many divines of our Church would have 
them again, I often think I would retire to one and pass my life 
in penance. But I would love you still — yes, there is no sin in 
such a love as mine now ; and my dear lord in heaven may see my 
heart ; and knows the tears that have washed my sin away — and 
now — now my duty is here, by my children whilst they need me, 
and by my poor old father, and ” 

“ And not by me ? ” Henry said. 

“ Hush ! ” she said again, and raised her hand up to his lip. 
“I have been your nurse. You could not see me, Harry, when 
you were in the smallpox, and I came and sat by you. Ah ! I 
prayed that I might die, but it would have been in sin, Henry. 
Oh, it is horrid to look back to that time ! It is over now and 
X)ast, and it has been forgiven me. When you need me again, I 
will come ever so far. When your heart is wounded, then come to 
me, my dear. Be silent ! let me say all. You never loved me, 
dear Henry — no, you do not now, and I thank Heaven for it. I 
used to watch you, and knew by a thousand signs that it was so. 
Do you remember how glad you were to go away to college '? ’Twas 
I sent you. I told my papa that, and Mr. Atterbury too, when I 
spoke to him in London. And they both gave me absolution — both 
— and they are godly men, having authority to bind and to loose. 
And they forgave me, as my dear lord forgave me before he went 
to heaven.” 

“ I think the angels are not all in heaven,” Mr. Esmond said. 
And as a brother folds a sister to his heart ; and as a mother cleaves 
to her son’s breast — so for a few moments Esmond’s beloved mistress 
came to him and blessed him. 


CHAPTER VII 

I AM MADE WELCOME AT WALCOTE 

A S they came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from 
within were lighted up with friendly welcome ; the supper- 
table was spread in the oak-parlour ; it seemed as if forgive- 
ness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two or three 
familiar faces of domestics were on the look-out at the porch — the 
old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from Castlewood 
in my Lord’s livery of tawny and blue. His dear mistress pressed 
his arm as they passed into the hall. Her eyes beamed out on him 
with affection indescribable. “Welcome ! ” was all she said, as she 
looked up, putting back her fair curls and black hood. A sweet 
rosy smile blushed on her face ; Harry thought he had never seen 
her look so charming. Her face was lighted with a joy that was 
brighter than beauty — she took a hand of her son who was in the 
hall waiting his mother — she did not quit Esmond’s arm. 

“ Welcome, Harry ! ” my young lord echoed after her. “ Here, 
we are all come to say so. Here’s old Pincot, hasn’t she grown 
handsome ? ” and Pincot, who was older and no handsomer than 
usual, made a curtsey to the Captain, as she called Esmond, and 
told my Lord to “ Have done, now ! ” 

“ And here’s Jack Lockwood. He’ll make a famous grenadier, 
Jack; and so shall I; we’ll both ’list under you, cousin. As soon 
as I am seventeen, I go to the army — every gentleman goes to the 
army. Look who comes here ! — ho, ho ! ” he burst into a laugh. 
“ ’Tis Mistress Trix, with a new riband ; I knew she would put on 
one as soon as she heard a captain was coming to supper.” 

This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote House : 
in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from an open gallery, 
where are the doors of the sleeping chambers : and from one of 
these, a wax candle in her hand, and illuminating her, came Mistress 
Beatrix — the light falling indeed upon the scarlet riband which she 
wore, and upon the most brilliant white neck in the world. 

Esmond had left a child and found a woman, grown beyond the 
common height ; and arrived at such a dazzling completeness of 
beauty, that his eyes might well show surprise and delight at be- 


198 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

holding Iier. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and melting, 
that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by an attraction 
irresistible : and that night the great Duke was at the playhouse 
after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she chanced to enter 
at the opposite side of the theatre at the same moment) at her, and 
not at him. She was a brown beauty : that is, her eyes, hair, and 
eyebrows and eyelashes were dark : her hair curling with rich undu- 
lations, and waving over her shoulders ; but her complexion was as 
dazzling white as snow in sunshine : except her cheeks, which were 
a bright red, and her lips, which were of a still deeper crimson. 
Her mouth and chin, they said, were too large and full, and so they 
might be for a goddess in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes 
were fire, wliose look was love, whose voice was the sweetest low 
song, whose shape was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, 
whose foot as it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, 
and whose motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace 
— -agile as a nymph, lofty as a queen — now melting, now imperious, 
now sarcastic— there was no single movement of hers but was 
beautiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, 
and remembers a paragon. 

So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and 
her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond. 

‘‘ She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes,” says 
my Lord, still laughing. 0 my fine mistress ! is this the way 
you set your cap at the Captain 1 ” She approached, shining smiles 
upon Esmond, who could look at nothing but her eyes. She ad- 
vanced holding forward her head, as if she would have him kiss her 
as he used to do when she was a child. 

“ Stop,” she said, “ I am grown too big ! Welcome, Cousin 
Harry ! ” and she made liim an arch curtsey, sweeping down to the 
ground almost, with the most gracious bend, looking up the while 
with the brightest eyes and sweetest smile. Love seemed to radiate 
from her. Harry eyed her witli such a rapture as the first lover 
is described as having by Milton. 

“N’est-ce pas'?” says my Lady, in a low, sweet voice, still 
hanging on his arm. 

Esmond turned round witli a start and a blush, as he met his 
mistress’s clear eyes. He liad forgotten her, rapt in admiration of 
the filia pulcrior. 

“ Right foot forward, toe turned out, so : now drop the curtsey, 
and show the red stockings, Trix. They’ve silver clocks, Harry. 
The Dowager sent ’em. Slie went to put ’em on,” cries my Lord. 

“ Hush, you stupid child ! ” says miss, smothering her brother 
with kisses ; and then she must come and kiss her mamma, looking 



BEATRIX. 









« 

i 


THE HOUSEHOLD AT WALCOTE 1()() 

all the while at Harry, over his mistress’s shoulder. And if she 
did not kiss him, she gave him both her hands, and then took 
one of his in both hands, and said, “ 0 Harry, we’re so, so glad 
you’re come ! ” 

“ There are woodcocks for supi)er,” says my Lord. “ Huzzay ! 
It was sucli a hungry sermon.” 

“And it is the 29th of December; and our Harry has come 
home.” 

“ Huzzay, old Pincot ! ” again says my Lord ; and my dear 

lady’s lips looked as if they were trembling with a prayer. She 

would have Harry lead in Beatrix to the supper-room, going herself 
with my young Lord Viscount ; and to this party came Tom Tusher 
directly, whom four at least out of the company of five wished 
away. Away he went, however, as soon as the sweetmeats were 
put down, and then, by the great crackling fire, his mistress, or 
Beatrix with her blushing graces, filling his glass for him, Harry 

told the story of his campaign, and passed the most delightful night 

his life had ever known. The sun was up long ere he was, so deep, 
sweet, and refreshing was his slumber. He woke as if angels had 
been watching at his bed all night. I dare say one that was as 
pure and loving as an angel had blessed his sleep with her prayers. 

Next morning the chaplain read jjrayers to the little household 
at Walcote, as the custom was ; Esmond thought Mistress Beatrix 
did not listen to Tusher’s exhortation much : her eyes were wander- 
ing everywhere during the service, at least whenever he looked 
up he met them. Perhaps he also was not very attentive to his 
Reverence the Chaplain. “ This might have been my life,” he was 
thinking ; “ this might have been my duty from now till old age. 
Well, were it not a pleasant one to be with these dear friends and 
part from ’em no morel Until — until the destined lover comes 
and takes away pretty Beatrix ” — and the best part of Tom Tusher’s 
exposition, which may have been very learned and eloquent, was 
quite lost to poor Harry by this vision of the destined lover, who 
put the preacher out. 

All the while of the prayers, Beatrix knelt a little way before 
Harry Esmond. The red stockings were changed for a pair of 
grey, and black shoes, in which her feet looked to the full as pretty. 
All the roses of spring could not vie with the brightness of her 
complexion ; Esmond thought he had never seen anything like the 
sunny lustre of her eyes. My Lady Viscountess look fiitigued, as 
if with watching, and her face was pale. 

Miss Beatrix remarked these signs of indisposition in her mother 
and deplored them. “ I am an old woman,” says my Lady, with a 
kind smile ; “I cannot hope to look as young as you do, my dear.” 


200 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“ She’ll never look as good as you do if she lives till she’s 
a hundred,” says my Lord, taking his mother by the waist, and 
kissing her hand. 

“Do I look very wicked, cousin'?” says Beatrix, turning full 
round on Esmond, with her pretty face so close under his chin, that 
the soft perfumed hair touched it. She laid her finger-tips on his 
sleeve as she spoke ; and he put his other hand over hers. 

“ I’m like your looking-glass,” says he, “ and that can’t flatter 
you.” 

“ He means that you are always looking at him, my dear,” says 
her mother archly. Beatrix ran away from Esmond at this, and 
flew to her mamma, whom she kissed, stopping my Lady’s mouth 
with her pretty hand. 

“ And Harry is very good to look at,” says my Lady, with her 
fond eyes regarding the young man. 

“If ’tis good to see a happy face,” says he, “ you see that.” 
My Lady said, “Amen,” with a sigh; and Harry thought the 
memory of her dear lord rose up and rebuked her back again 
into sadness ; for her face lost the smile, and resumed its look of 
melancholy. 

“ Why, Harry, how fine we look in our scarlet and silver, and 
our black periwig ! ” cries my Lord. “ Mother, I am tired of my 
own hair. When shall I have a peruke '? Where did you get your 
steenkirk, Harry'?” 

“It’s some of my Lady Dowager’s lace,” says Harry; “she 
gave me this and a number of other fine things.” 

“My Lady Dowager isn’t such a bad woman,” my Lord 
continued. 

“ She’s not so — so red as she’s painted,” says Miss Beatrix. 

Her brother broke into a laugh. “ I’ll tell her you said so ; by 
the Lord, Trix, I will ! ” he cries out. 

“ She’ll know that you hadn’t the wit to say it, my Lord,” says 
Miss Beatrix. 

“We won’t quarrel the first day Harry’s here, will we, mother '? ” 
said the young lord. “We’ll see if we can get on to the new year 
without a fight. Have some of this Christmas pie. And here 
comes the tankard ; no, it’s Pincot with the tea.” 

“ Will the Captain choose a dish ? ” asked Mistress Beatrix. 

“I say, Harry,” my Lord goes on, “I’ll show thee my horses 
after breakfast ; and we’ll go a bird-netting to-night, and on Monday 
there’s a cock-match at Winchester — do you love cock-fighting, 
Harry? — between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gentlemen of 
Hampshire, at ten pound the battle, and fifty pound the odd battle 
to show one-and-twenty cocks.” 


201 


A THEME FOR A POET 

“ And what will you do, Beatrix, to amuse our kinsman ? ” asks 
my Lady. 

“I’ll listen to him,” says Beatrix. “I am sure he has a hun- 
dred things to tell us. And I’m jealous already of the Spanish 
ladies. Was that a beautiful nun at Cadiz that you rescued from 
the soldiers ? Your man talked of it last night in the kitchen, and 
Mrs. Betty told me this morning as she combed my hair. And he 
says you must be in love, for you sat on deck all night, and scribbled 
verses all day in your table-book.” Harry thought if he had wanted 
a subject for verses yesterday, to-day he had found one : and not 
all the Lindamiras and Ardelias of the poets were half so beautiful 
as this young creature ; but he did not say so, though some one did 
for him. 

This was his dear lady, who, after the meal was over, and the 
young people were gone, began talking of her children with Mr. 
Esmond, and of the characters of one and the other, and of her 
hopes and fears for both of them. “’Tis not while they are at 
home,” she said, “and in their mother’s nest, I fear for them — ’tis 
when they are gone into the world, whither I shall not be able to 
follow them. Beatrix will begin her service next year. You may 
have heard a rumour about — about my Lord Blandford. They 
were both children ; and it is but idle talk. I know my kinswoman 
would never let him make such a poor marriage as our Beatrix 
would be. There’s scarce a princess in Europe tli;it she thinks is 
good enough for him or for her ambition.” 

“ There’s not a princess in Europe to compare with her,” says 
Esmond 

“In beauty'? No, perhaps not,” answered my Lady. “She is 
most beautiful, isn’t she? ’Tis not a mother’s partiality that 
deceives me. I marked you yesterday when she came down the 
stair : and read it in your face. We look when you don’t fancy us 
looking, and see better than you think, dear Harry : and just now, 
when they spoke about your poems — you writ pretty lines when 
you were but a boy — you thought Beatrix was a pretty subject for 
verse, did not you, Harry ? ” (The gentleman could only blush for 
a reply.) “And so she is — nor are you the first her pretty face 
has captivated. ’Tis quickly done. Such a pair of bright eyes as 
liers learn their power very soon, and use it very early.” And, 
looking at him keenly with hers, the fair widow left him. 

And so it is — a pjiir of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice 
to subdue a man ; to enslave him, and inffame him ; to make him 
even forget ; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway 
dim to him ; and he so prizes them that he w^ould give all his life 
to i)ossess ’em. What is the fond love of dearest friends compared 


202 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


to this treasure ? Is nieuiory as strong as expectancy ? fruition, jus 
hunger '? gratitude, as desire ? I have looked at royal diamonds in 
the jewel-rooms in Europe, and thought how wars have been made 
about ’em ; Mogul sovereigns deposed and strangled for them, or 
ransomed with them ; millions expended to buy them ; and daring 
lives lost in digging out the little shining toys that I value no more 
than the button in my hat. And so there are other glittering 
baubles (of rare water too) for which men have been set to kill and 
([uarrel ever since mankind began ; and which last but for a score of 
years, when their sparkle is over. Where are those jewels now that 
beamed under Cleopatra’s forehead, or shone in the sockets of Helen '? 

The second day after Esmond’s coming to Walcote, Tom Tusher 
had leave to take a holiday, and went off in his very best gown and 
bands to court the young woman whom his Reverence desired to 
marry, and who was not a viscount’s widow, as it turned out, but 
a brewer’s relict at Southampton, with a couple of thousand pounds 
to her fortune : for honest Tom’s heart was under such excellent 
control, that Venus herself without a portion would never have 
(;aused it to flutter. So he rode away on his heavy-paced gelding 
to pursue his jogtrot loves, leaving Esmond to the society of his 
dear mistress and her daughter, and with his young lord for a 
companion, who was charmed, not only to see an old friend, but to 
have the tutor and his Latin books put out of the way. 

The boy talk^ed of things and people, and not a little about him- 
self, in his frank artless way. ’Twas easy to see that he and his 
sister had the better of their fond mother, for the first place in whose 
affections, though they fought constantly, and though the kind lady 
persisted that she loved both equally, ’twas not difficult to under- 
stand that Frank was his mother’s darling and favourite. He ruled 
the whole household (always excepting rebellious Beatrix) not less 
now than when he was a child marshalling the village boys in 
playing at soldiers, and caning them lustily too, like the sturdiest 
corporal. As for Tom Tusher, his Reverence treated the young 
lord with that politeness and deference which he always showed for 
a great man, whatever his age or his stature was. Indeed, with 
respect to this young one, it was impossible not to love him, so 
frank and winning were his manners, his beauty, his gaiety, the 
ring of his laughter, and the delightful tone of his voice. Wherever 
he went, he charmed and domineered. I think his old grandfather 
the Dean, and the grim old housekeeper, Mrs. Pincot, were as much 
his slaves as his mother was : and as for Esmond, he found himself 
presently submitting to a certain fascination the boy had, and slaving 
it like the rest of the family. The pleasure which he had in Frardv’s 
mere company and converse exceeded that which he ever enjoyed in 


“THE MARCHIONESS OF BLANDFORD” 20.3 


the society of any other man, however dcliglitful in talk, or famous 
for wit. His presence brought sunshine into a room, his laugh, his 
prattle, his noble beauty and brightness of look cheered and 
charmed indescribably. At the least tale of sorrow, his hands were 
in his purse, and he was eager with sympathy and bounty. The 
way in which women loved and petted him, when, a year or two 
afterwards, he came ui)on the world, yet a mere boy, and the follies 
which they did for him (as indeed he for them), recalled the career 
of Rochester, aiid outdid the successes of Grammont. His very 
creditors loved him ; and the hardest usurers, and some of the rigid 
prudes of the other sex too, could deny him nothing. He was no 
more witty than another man, but what he said, he said and looked 
as no man else could say or look it. I have seen the women at the 
comedy at Bruxelles crowd round him in the lobby ; and as he sat 
on the stage more people looked at him than at the actors, and 
watched him ; and I remember at Ramillies, when he was hit and 
fell, a great big red-haired Scotch sergeant flung his halbert down, 
burst out a-crying like a woman, seizing him up as if he had been 
an infant, and carrying him out of the fire. This brother and sister 
were the most beautiful couple ever seen ; though after he winged 
away from the maternal nest this pair were seldom together. 

Sitting fit dinner two days after Esmond’s arrival (it was the 
last day of the year), and so happy a one to Harry Esmond, that 
to enjoy it was quite worth all the previous pain which he had 
endured and forgot, my young lord, filling a bumper, and bidding 
Harry take another, (Irank to his sister, saluting her under the 
title of “ Marchioness.” 

“ Marchioness ! ” says Harry, not without a pang of wonder, for 
he was curious and jealous already. 

“ Nonsense, my Lord,” says Beatrix, with a toss of her head. 
My Lady Viscountess looked up for a moment at Esmond and cast 
her eyes down. 

“The Marchioness of Blandford,” says Frank. “Don’t you 
know — hath not Rouge Dragon told you'?” (My Lord used to 
call the Dowager of Chelsey by this and other names.) “Bland- 
ford has a lock of her hair : the Duchess found him on his knees 
to Mistress Trix, and boxed his ears, and said Dr. Hare should 
whip him.” 

“ I wish Mr. Tusher would whip you too,” says Beatrix. 

My Lady only said, “ I hope you will tell none of these silly 
stories elsewhere than at home, Francis.” 

“ ’Tis true, on my word,” continues Frank. “ Look at Harry 
scowling, mother, and see how Beatrix blushes as red as the silver- 
clocked stockings.” 


sot THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ I think we liad best leave the gentlemen to their wine and 
tlieir talk,” says Mrs. Beatrix, rising np witli the air of a young 
queen, tossing her rustling Howiiig draperies about her, and quitting 
the room, follow^ed by her mother. 

Lady Castlewood again looked at Esmond, as she stooped down 
and kissed Frank. “ Do not tell those silly stories, child,” she said : 
“do not drink much wine, sir; Harry never loved to drink wine.” 
And she Avent away, too, in her black robes, looking back on the 
young man with her fair, fond face. 

“ Egad ! it’s true,” says Frank, sipping his wine with the air of 
a lord. “ What think you of this Lisbon — real Oollares ? ’Tis 
better than your heady port : we got it out of one of the Spanish 
ships that came from Vigo last year : my mother bought it at 
Southampton, as the ship was lying there — the Ease, Captain 
Hawkins.” 

“ Why, I came home in that ship,” says Harry. 

“ And it brought home a good fellow and good wine,” says my 
Lord. “ I say, Harry, I wish thou hadst not that cursed bar 
sinister.” 

“And why not the bar sinister'?” asks the other. 

“ Suppose I go to the army and am killed — every gentleman 
goes to the army — who is to take care of the women 1 Trix will 
never stop at home ; mother’s in love with you, — yes, I think 
mother’s in love with you. She was always praising you, and 
always talking about you; and when she went to Southampton, 
to see the ship, I found her out. But you see it is impossible : we 
are of the oldest blood in England; we came in with the Conqueror : 
we were only baronets, — but what then? Ave Avere forced into that. 
James the First forced our great-grandfather. We are above titles ; 
Ave old English gentry don’t want ’em ; the Queen can make a duke 
any day. Look at Blandford’s father, Duke Churchill, and Duchess 
Jennings, Avhat Avere they, Harry ? Damn it, sir, Avhat are they, to 
turn up their noses at us ? Where Avere they, Avhen our ancestor 
rode with King Henry at Agincourt, and filled up the French King’s 
cup after Poictiers? ’Fore George, sir, Avhy shouldn’t Blandford 
marry Beatrix ? By G — ! he shall marry Beatrix, or tell me the 
reason Avhy. We’ll marry with the best blood of England, and none 
but the best blood of England. You are an Esmond, and you can’t 
help your birth, my boy. Let’s have another bottle. What ! no 
more ? I’ve drunk three parts of this myself. I had many a night 
Avith my father ; you stood to him like a man, Harry. You backed 
your blood ; you can’t help your misfortune, you knoAV, — no man 
can help that.” 

Tlie elder said he Avould go in to his mistress’s tea-table. The 


BEATRIX’S STARS 


205 


young lad, Avith a heightened colour and voice, began singing a 
snatch of a song, and marched out of the room. Esmond heard 
him presently calling his dogs about him, and cheering and talking » 
to them ; and by a hundred of his looks and gestures, tricks of voice 
and gait, was reminded of the dead lord, Frank’s father. 

And so, the Sylvester night passed away ; the family parted 
long before midnight. Lady Castlewood remembering, no doubt, 
former NeAV-Year’s Ea^s, when healths Avere drunk, and laughter 
Avent round in the company of him, to wliom years, past, and 
present, and future, were to be as one ; and so cared not to sit with 
her children and hear the Cathedral bells ringing the birth of the 
year 1703. Esmond heard the cliimes as he sat in his OAvn chamber, 
ruminating by the blazing fire there, and listened to the last notes 
of them, looking out from his window towards the city, and the 
great grey toAA^ers of the Cathedral lying under the frosty sky, with 
the keen stars shining above. 

The sight of these brilliant orbs no doubt made him think of 
other luminaries. “ And so her eyes have already done execution,” 
thought Esmond — “on Avliom?— who can tell mel” Luckily his 
kinsman was by, and Esmond knew he Avould have no difficulty in 
finding out Mistress Beatrix’s history from the simple talk of 
the boy. 


. I 




CHAPTER VIII 
FAMILY TALK 

W HAT Harry admired and submitted to in the j^retty lad 
his kinsman was (for why should he resist it ?) the calm- 
ness of patronage which my young lord assumed, as if to 
command was his undoubted right, and all the world (below his 
degree) ought to bow down to Viscount Castlewood. 

“ I know my place, Harry,” he said. “ I’m not proud — the 
boys at Winchester College say I’m proud : but I’m not proud. I 
am simply Francis James, Viscount Castlewood in the peerage of 
Ireland. I might have been (do you know that ?) Francis James, 
Marquis and Earl of Esmond in that of England. The late lord 
refused the title which was offered to him by my godfather, his late 
Majesty. You should know that — you are of our family, you know 
— you cannot help your bar sinister, Harry my dear fellow; and 
you belong to one of the best families in England, in spite of that ; 
and you stood by my father, and by G — ! I’ll stand by you. You 
shall never want a friend, Harry, while Francis James, Viscount 
Castlewood, has a shilling. It’s now 1703 — I shall come of age in 
1709. I shall go back to Castlewood; I shall live at Castlewood; 
I shall build up the house. My property will be pretty well restorecl 
by then. The late viscount mismanaged my property, and left it 
in a very bad state. My mother is living close, as you see, and 
keeps me in a way hardly befitting a peer of these realms ; for I 
have but a pair of horses, a governor, and a man that is valet and 
groom. But when I am of age, these things will be set right, 
Harry. Our house will be as it should be. You will always come 
to Castlewood, won’t youl You shall always have your two rooms 

in the court kept for you ; and if anybody slights you, d them ! 

let them have a care of me. I shall marry early — Trix Avill be a 
duchess by that time, most likely : for a cannon-ball may knock 
over his Grace any day, you know.” 

“ How ” says Harry. 

“Hush, my dear !” says my Lord Viscount. “You are of the 
family— you are faithful to us, by George, and I tell you every- 
thing. Blandford will marry her — or ” and here he put his 


A SECRET 


207 


little hand on his sword — “you understand the rest. Blandford 
knows which of us two is the best weapon. At small-sword, or 
back-sword, or sword and dagger if he likes, I can beat him. I ► 
liave tried him, Harry ; and begad he knows I am a man not to be 
trifled with.” 

“ But you do not mean,” says Harry, concealing his laughter, 
but not his wonder, “that you can force my Lord Blandford, the 
son of the first man of this kingdom, to marry your sister at sword ^s 
point 1 ” 

“ I mean to say that we are cousins by the mother’s side, 
though that’s nothing to boast of. I mean to say that an Esmond 
is as good as a Churchill ; and when the King comes back, the 
Maniuis of Esmond’s sister may be a match for any nobleman’s 
daughter in the kingdom. There are but two marquises in all 
England, William Herbert, Marquis of Powis, and Francis James, 
Marquis of Esmond; and hark you, Harry, — now swear you will 
never mention this. Give me your honour as a gentleman, for you 
are a gentleman, though you are a ” 

“Well, welll” says Harry, a little impatient. 

“Well, then, when after my late Viscount’s misfortune, my 
mother went up with us to London, to ask for justice against you 
all (as for Mohun, I’ll have his blood, as sure as my name is Francis, 
Viscount Esmond) — we went to stay with onr cousin my Lady 
Marlborough, with whom we had quarrelled for ever so long. But 
when misfortune came, she stood by her blood; — so did the 
Dowager Viscountess stand by her blood ; — so did you. Well, sir, 
whilst my mother was petitioning the late Prince of Orange— for 
I will never call him King — and while you were in prison, we lived 
at my Lord Marlborough’s house, who was only a little there, being 
away with the army in Holland. And then ... I say, Harry, 
you won’t tell, now '? ” 

Harry again made a vow of secrecy. 

“ Well, there used to be all sorts of fun, you know : my Lady 
Marlborough was veiy fond of us, and she said I was to be her 
page ; and she got Trix to be a maid of honour, and while she was 
up in her room crying, we used to be always having fun, you know ; 
and the Duchess used to kiss me, and so did her daughters, and 
Blandford fell tremendous in love with Trix, and she liked him ; 
and one day he — he kissed her behind a door — he did though, — 
and the Duchess caught him, and she banged such a box of the 
ear both at Trix and Blandford— you should have seen it ! And 
then she said that we must leave directly, and abused my mamma 
who was cognisant of the business ; but she wasn’t — never thinking 
about anything but father. And so we came down to Walcote. 


208 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Blanciford being locked up, and not allowed to see Trix. But I 
got at liim. I climbed along the gutter, and in through the window, 
where lie was crying. 


i 


“ ‘ Marquis,’ says I, when he had opened it and helped me in, 
‘ you know I wear a sword,’ for I had brought it. 

“‘0 Viscount,’ says he — ‘0 my dearest Frank!’ and he 
threw himself into my arms and burst out a-crying. ‘ I do love 
Mistress Beatrix so, that I shall die if I don’t have her.’ 

“ ‘ My dear Blandford,’ says I, ‘ you are young to think of 
marrying ; ’ for he was but fifteen, and a young fellow of that age 
can scarce do so, you know. 

“ ‘ But I’ll wait twenty years, if she’ll have me,’ says he. ‘ I’ll 
never marry— no, never, never, never marry anybody but her. No, 
not a princess, though they would have me do it ever so. If Beatrix 
will wait for me, her Blandford swears he will be faithful.’ And he 
wrote a paper (it wasn’t spelt right, for he wrote ‘ I’m ready to sine 
with my hlode,'‘ which, you know, Harry, isn’t the way of spelling 
it), and vowing that he would marry none other but the Honourable 
Mistress Gertrude Beatrix Esmond, only sister of his dearest friend 
Francis James, fourth Viscount Esmond. And so I gave him a 
locket of her hair.” 

“ A locket of her hair 1 ” cries Esmond. 

“Yes. Trix gave me one after the fight with the Duchess that 
very day. I am sure I didn’t want it ; and so I gave it him, and 
we kissed at parting, and said, ‘ Good-bye, brother I ’ And I got 
back through the gutter ; and we set off home that very evening. 
And he went to King’s College, in Cambridge, and I’m going to 
Cambridge soon ; and if he doesn’t stand to his promise (for he’s 
only wrote once), — he knows I wear a sword, Harry. Come along, 
and let’s go see the cocking-match at Winchester.” 

“ . . . But I say,” he added, laughing, after a pause, “ I don’t 
think Trix will break her heart about him. La bless you ! when- 
ever she sees a man, she makes eyes at him ; and young Sir Wilmot 
Crawley of Queen’s Crawley, and Anthony Henley of Alresford, 
were at swords drawn about her, at the Winchester Assembly, a 
month ago.” 

That night Mr. Harry’s sleep was by no means so pleasant or 
sweet as it had been on the first two evenings after his arrival 
at Walcote. “ So the bright eyes have been already shining on 
another,” thought he, “and the pretty lips, or the cheeks at any 
rate, have begun the work which they were made for. Here’s a 
girl not sixteen, and one young gentleman is already whimpering 
over a lock of her liair, and two country squires are ready to cut 
each other’s throats that they may have the honour of a dance with 


I AM TEMPTED, — 209 

her. What a fool am I to be dallying about this passion, and 
singeing my wings in this foolish flame ! Wings ! — why not say 
crutches 1 There is but eight years’ difference between us, to be , 
sure ; but in life I am thirty years older. How could I ever hope 
to please such a sweet creature as that, with my rough ways and 
glum face '? Say that I have merit ever so much, and won myself 
a name, could she ever listen to mel She must be my Lady 
Marchioness, and I remain a nameless bastard. 0 my master, 
my master ! ” (Here he fell to thinking with a passionate grief 
of the vow which he had made to his poor dying lord.) “0 my 
mistress, dearest and kindest, will you be contented with the sacri- 
fice which the poor orphan makes for you, whom you love, and who 
so loves you ? ” 

And then came a fiercer pang of temptation. “ A word from 
me,” Harry thought, “ a syllable of explanation, and all this might 
be changed ; but no, I swore it over the dying bed of my benefactor. 
For the sake of him and his; for the sacred love and kindness of 
old days ; I gave my promise to him, and may kind Heaven enable 
me to keep my vow ! ” 

The next day, although Esmond gave no sign of what was going 
on in his mind, but strove to be more than ordinarily gay and 
cheerful when he met his friends at the morning meal, his dear 
mistress, whose clear eyes it seemed no emotion of his could escape, 
perceived that something troubled him, for she looked anxiously 
towards him more than once during the breakfast, and when he 
went up to his chamber afterwards she presently followed him, and 
knocked at his door. 

As she entered, no doubt the whole story was clear to her at 
once, for she found our young gentleman packing his valise, pursuant 
to the resolution which he had come to over-night of making a brisk 
retreat out of this temptation. 

She closed the door very carefully behind her, and then leant 
agtiinst it, very pale, her hands folded before her, looking at the 
young man, who was kneeling over his work of packing. “ Are 
you going so soon ? ” she said. 

He rose up from his knees, blushing, perhaps, to be so dis- 
covered, in the very act, as it were, and took one of her fair 
little hands — it was that which had her marriage ring on — and 
kissed it. 

“It is best that it should be so, dearest lady,” he said. 

“I knew you were going, at breakfast. I — I thought you 
might stay. What has happened ? Why can’t you remain longer 
with US'? What has Frank told you — you were talking together 
late last night ? ” 

7 


O 


210 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“ I had but three days’ leave from Chelsey,” Esmond said, as 
gaily as he could. “ My aunt — she lets me call her aunt — is my 
mistress now ! I owe her my lieutenancy and my laced coat. She 
has taken me into high ftivour ; and my new General is to dine at 
Chelsey to-morrow — General Lumley, madam — who has api)ointed j 
me his aide-de-camp, and on whom I must have the honour of j 
waiting. See, here is a letter from the Dowager ; the post brought 
it last night ; and I would not speak of it, for fear of disturbing our 
last merry meeting.” 

My Lady glanced at the letter, and put it down with a smile 
that was somewhat contemptuous. “ I have no need to read the 
letter,” says she — (indeed, ’twas as well she did not ; for the 
Chelsey missive, in the poor Dowager’s usual French jargon, per- 
mitted him a longer holiday than he said. “ Je vous donne,” quoth 
her Ladyship, “oui jour, pour vous fatigay parfaictement de vos 
parens fatigans ”) — “I have no need to read the letter,” says she. 

“ What was it Frank told you last night 1 ” 

“ He told me little I did not know,” Mr. Esmond answered. 
“But I have thought of that little, and here’s the result: I have 
no right to the name I bear, dear lady; and it is only by your 
sufferance that I am allowed to keep it. If I thought for an hour 
of what has perhaps crossed your mind too ” 

“Yes, I did, Harry,” said she; “I thought of it; and think 
of it. I would sooner call you my son than the greatest prince in 
Europe — yes, than the greatest prince. For who is there so good 
and so brave, and who would love her as you would 1 But there 
are reasons a mother can’t tell.” 

“I know them,” said Mr. Esmond, interrupting her with a 
smile. “ I know there’s Sir Wilmot Crawley of Queen’s Crawley, 
and Mr. Anthony Henley of the Grange, and my Lord Marquis of 
Blandford, that seems to be the favoured suitor. You shall ask 
me to wear my Lady Marchioness’s favours and to dance at her 
Ladyship’s wedding.” 

“ 0 Harry, Harry ! it is none of these follies that frighten 
me,” cried out Lady Castlewood. “ Lord Churchill is but a child, 
his outbreak about Beatrix was a mere boyish folly. His parents 
would rather see him buried than married to one below him in 
rank. And do you think that I would stoop to sue for a husband 
for Francis Esmond’s daughter ; or submit to have my girl smuggled 
into that proud fiimily to cause a quarrel between son and parents, 
and to be treated only as an inferior'? I would disdain such a 
meanness. Beatrix Avould scorn it. Ah ! Henry, ’tis not with 
you the fault lies, ’tis with her. I know you both, and love you : 
need I be ashamed of that love now? No, never, never, and ’tis 


AND FLY FROM TEMPTATION 211 

not you, dear Harry, that is unworthy. ’Tis for my poor Beatrix 
I tremble — whose headstrong will frightens me; whose jealous 
teuiper (they say I was jealous too, but, pray God, I am cured , 
ol that sin) and whose vanity no words or prayers of mine can 
cure — only sutfering, only experience, and remorse afterwards. 0 
Henry, she will make no man happy who loves her. Go away, 
my son : leave her : love us always, and think kindly of us : and 
for me, my dear, you know that these walls contain all that I love 
in the world.” 

In after life, did Esmond find the words true which his fond 
mistress spoke from her sad heart ? Warning he had : but I doubt 
others had warning before his time, and since : and he benefited 
by it as most men do. 

My young Lord Viscount was exceeding sorry when he heard 
that Harry could not come to the cock-match with him, and must 
go to London, but no doubt my Lord consoled himself when the 
Hampshire cocks won the match ; and he saw every one of the 
battles, and crowed properly over the conquered Sussex gentlemen. 

As Esmond rode towards town his servant, coming up to him, 
informed him with a grin, that Mistress Beatrix had brought out 
a new gown and blue stockings for that day’s dinner, in which she 
intended to appear, and had ftown into a rage and given her maid 
a slap on the face soon after she heard he was going away. Mistress 
Beatrix’s woman, the fellow said, came down to the servants’ hall 
crying, and with the mark of a blow still on lier cheek : but Esmond 
peremptorily ordered him to fall back and be silent, and rode on 
with thoughts enough of his own to occupy him — some sad ones, 
some inexpressibly dear and pleasant. 

His mistress, from whom he had been a year separated, was his 
dearest mistress again. The family from which he had been parted, 
and which he loved with the fondest devotion, was his family once 
more. If Beatrix’s beauty shone upon him, it was with a friendly 
lustre, and he could regard it with much such a delight as he 
brought away after seeing the beautiful pictures of the smiling 
Madonnas in the convent at Cadiz, when he was despatched thither 
with a flag; and as for his mistress, ’twas difficult to say with 
what a feeling he regarded her. ’Twas happiness to have seen 
her ; ’twas no great pang to part ; a filial tenderness, a love that 
was at once respect and protection, filled his mind as he thought 
of her ; and near her or far from her, and from that day until now, 
and from now till death is past, and beyond it, he prays that sacred 
flame may ever burn. 


CHAPTER IX 

/ MAKE THE CAMPAIGN OF 1704 

M r. ESMOND rode up to London then, where, if the Dowager 
had been angry at the abrupt leave of absence he took, she 
w’as mightily pleased at his speedy return. 

He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, 
General Lumley, who received him graciously, having known his 
father, and also, he was pleased to say, having had tlie very best 
accounts of Mr. Esmond from the officer whose aide-de-camp he had 
been at Vigo. During this winter Mr. Esmond was gazetted to a 
lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb’s regiment of Fusileers, then wdth 
their colonel in Flanders ; but being now attached to the suite of 
Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his owm regiment until more than 
a year afterwards, and after liis return from the campaign of Blen- 
heim, which was fought the next year. The campaign began very 
early, our troops marching out of their quarters before the winter 
was almost over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine, 
under the Duke’s command. His Grace joined the army in deep 
grief of mind, with crape on his sleeve, and his household in mourn- 
ing ; and the very same packet which brought the Commander-in- 
Chief over, brought letters to the forces which preceded him, and 
one from his dear mistress to Esmond, which interested him not 
a little. 

The young Marquis of Blandford, his Grace’s son, wffio had been 
entered in King’s College in Cambridge (whither my Lord Viscount 
liad also gone, to Trinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor), had 
been seized with smallpox, and was dead at sixteen years of age, 
and so poor Frank’s schemes for his sister’s advancement w^ere over, 
and that innocent childish passion nipped in the birth. 

Esmond’s mistress would have had him return, at least her 
letters hinted as much ; but in the presence of the enemy this was 
impossible, and our young man took his humble share in the siege, 
wdiicli need not be described here, and had the good-lu(*k to es('ai)e 
without a w'ound of any sort, and to drink his General’s health after 
the surrender. He was in constant military duty this year, and 
did not think of asking for a leave of absence, as one or two of his 


HONOURS TO THE CAPTAIN-GENERAL 213 

less lortuiiate friends did, who were cast away in tliat treinemdous 
storm which happened towards the close of November, that “which 
of late o’er pale Britannia past ” (as Mr. Addison sang of it), and in 
Avhich scores of our greatest ships and 15,000 of our seamen went 
down. 

They said that our Duke was quite heartbroken by the calamity 
which had befallen his family ; but his enemies found that he could 
subdue them, as well as master his grief. Successful as had been 
this great General’s operations in the past year, they were far en- 
hanced by the splendour of his victory in the ensuing campaign. 
His Grace the Captain-General went to England after Bonn, and 
our army fell back into Holland, where, in April 1704, his Grace 
again found the troops, embarking from Harwich and landing at 
Maesland Sluys : thence his Grace came immediately to the Hague, 
where he received the foreign ministers, general officers, and other 
people of quality. The greatest honours were paid to his Grace 
everywhere — at the Hague, Utrecht, Ruremonde, and Maestricht ; 
the civil authorities coming to meet his coaches ; salvoes of cannon 
saluting him, canopies of state being erected for him where he 
stopped, and feasts prepared for the numerous gentlemen following 
in his suite. His Grace reviewed the troops of the States-General 
between Li^ge and Maestricht, and afterwards the English forces, 
under the command of General Churchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Every 
preparation was made for a long march ; and the army heard, with 
no small elation, that it was the Commander-in-Chief’s intention to 
carry the war out of the Low Countries, and to march on the 
Mozelle. Before leaving our camp at Maestricht we heard that the 
French, under the Marshal Villeroy, were also bound towards the 
Mozelle. 

Towards the end of May, the army reached Coblentz ; and next 
day, his Grace, and the generals accompanying him, went to visit 
the Elector of Treves at his Castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the horse and 
dragoons passing the Rhine whilst the Duke was entertained at a 
grand feast by the Elector. All as yet was novelty, festivity, and 
splendour — a brilliant march of a great and glorious army through a 
friendly country, and sure through some of the most beautiful scenes 
of nature which I ever witnessed. 

The foot and artillery, following after the horse as quick as 
possible, crossed the Rhine under Ehrenbreitstein, and so to Castel, 
over against Mayntz, in which city his Grace, his generals, and his 
retinue were received at the landing-place by the Elector’s coaches, 
carried to his Highness’s palace amidst the thunder of cannon, and 
then once more magnificently entertained. Gidlingen, in Bavaria, 
was ajipointed as the general rendezvous of the army, and thither, 


214. 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


by (liffcrent routes, the whole forces of Eiiglisli, Dutch, Danes, and 
German auxiliaries took tlieir way. The foot and artillery under 
General Churchill passed the Neckar, at Heidelberg; and Esmond 
had an opportunity of seeing that city and palace, once so famous 
and beautiful (though shattered and battered by the French, under 
Turenne, in the late war), where his grandsire had served the 
beautiful and unfortunate Electress-Palatine, the first King Charles’s 
sister. 

At Mindelsheim, the famous Prince of Savoy came to visit our 
commander, all of us crowding eagerly to get a sight of that brilliant 
and intrepid warrior ; and our troops were drawn up in battalia 
before the Prince, who was pleased to express his admiration of 
this noble English army. At length we came in sight of the enemy 
between Dillingen and Lawingen, the Brentz lying between the two 
armies. The Elector, judging that Donauwort would be the point 
of his Grace’s attack, sent a strong detachment of his best troops 
to Count Darcos, who was posted at Schellenberg, near that place, 
where great intrenchrnents were thrown up, and thousands of 
pioneers employed to strengthen the position. 

On the 2nd of July his Grace stormed the post, with what 
success on our part need scarce be told. His Grace advanced with 
six thousand foot, English and Dutch, thirty squadrons, and three 
regiments of Imperial Cuirassiers, the Duke crossing the river at 
the head of the cavalry. Although our troops made the attack with 
unparalleled courage and fury — rushing up to the very guns of the 
enemy, and being slaughtered before their works — we were driven 
back many times, and should not have carried them, but that the 
Imperialists came up under the Prince of Baden, when the enemy 
could make no head against us : we pursued him into the trenches, 
making a terrible slaughter there, and into the very Danube, where 
a great part of his troops, following the example of their generals. 
Count Darcos and the Elector himself, tried to save themselves by 
swimming. Our army entered Donauwort, which the Bavarians 
evacuated ; and where ’twas said the Elector purposed to have 
given us a warm reception, by burning us in our beds ; the cellars 
of the houses, when we took possession of them, being found stuffed 
with straw. But though the links were there, the linkboys had 
run away. The townsmen saved their houses, and our General 
took possession of the enemy’s ammunition in the arsenals, his 
stores, and magazines. Five days afterwards a great “ Te Deum ” 
was sung in Prince Lewis’s army, and a solemn day of thanksgiving 
held in our own ; the Prince of Savoy’s compliments coming to his 
Grace the Captain-General during the day’s religious ceremony, and 
concluding, as it were, with an Amen. 


MARLBOROUGH 


215 


And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly 
country ; the pomps and festivities of more than one German court ; 
the severe struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the triumph of 
victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part of military duty : our 
troops entering the enemy’s territory, and putting all around them 
to fire and sword ; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, 
slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and 
carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does 
the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valour 
of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so 
brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part 
of the drama of war '? You, gentlemen of England, who live at 
home at ease, and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph 
with which our chieftains are bepraised — you, pretty maidens, 
that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call 
you, and huzzali for the British Grenadiers — do you take account 
that these items go to make up the amount of the triumph you 
admire, and form part of the duties of the heroes you fondle 'I Our 
chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, 
worshipped almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he was im- 
passable before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the 
greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony ; before a hundred 
thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the 
door of his burning hovel ; before a carouse of drunken German 
lords, or a monarch’s court, or a cottage table where his plans were 
laid, or an enemy’s battery, vomiting flame and death, and strewing 
corpses round about him ; — he was always cold, calm, resolute, like 
fate. He performed a treason or a court-bow, he told a falsehood 
as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about 
the weather. He took a mistress, and left her ; he betrayed his 
benefactor, and supported him, or would have murdered him, with 
the same calmness always, and having no more remorse than Olotho 
when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when she cuts it. In the 
hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy’s officers say, the 
Prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury ; his eyes lighted 
up ; he rushed hither and thither, raging ; he shrieked curses and 
encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on, and 
himself always at the first of the hunt. Our Duke was as calm 
at the mouth of the cannon as at the door of a drawing-room. 
Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was, had he had 
a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. 
He achieved the highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of 
thought, as he performed the very meanest action of which a man 
is capable ; told a lie, or cheated a fond woman, or robbed a poor 


2l6 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

beggar of a liabpeiiiiy, witli a like awful serenity and equal capacity 
of the highest and lowest acts of our natiu’e. 

His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there 
were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit ; 
but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first 
(captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his pro- 
digious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously 
cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured — for 
he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as his 
instruments alike, and took something of theirs, either some 
quality or some property — the blood of a soldier, it might be, or 
a jewelled hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a 
portion out of a starving sentiners three-farthings ; or (when he 
was young) a kiss from a woman, and the gold chain off her neck, 
taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I have said, 
this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish or a 
sparrow fall, with the same amount of sympathy for either. Not 
that he had no tears : he could always order up this reserve at the 
proper moment to battle ; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, 
and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe 
to a shoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch ; be 
haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand (or 
stab you whenever he saw occasion). — But yet those of tlie army, 
wlio knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him 
most of all : and as he rode along the lines to battle or galloped up 
in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy’s 
charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as 
they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his will made 
them irresistible. 

After the great victory of Blenheim the enthusiasm of the army 
for the Duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted 
to a sort of rage — nay, the very officers who cursed him in their 
hearts were among the most frantic to (dieer him. Who could 
refuse his meed of admiration to such a victory and such a victor 1 
Not he wlio writes : a man may profess to be ever so much a 
philosopher ; but he who fought on that day must feel a thrill of 
pride as he recalls it. 

The French right was posted near to the village of Blenheim, 
on the Danube, where the Marshal Tallard’s quarters were ; their 
line extending through, it may be a league and a half, before 
Lutzingen and up to a woody hill, round the base of which, and 
acting against the Prince of Savoy, were forty of his squadrons. 

Here was a village that the Frenchmen had burned, the wood 
lieing, in fact, a better shelter and easier of guard than any village. 


BLENHEIM 


217 


Before these two villages and the French lines ran a little 
stream, not more than two foot broad, through a marsh (that was 
mostly dried np from the heats of the weather), and this stream 
was the only separation between the two armies — ours coming up 
and ranging themselves in line of battle before the French, at six 
o’clock in the morning ; so that our line was quite visible to theirs ; 
and the whole of this great plain was black and swarming with 
troops for hours before the cannonading began. 

On one side and the other this cannonading lasted many hours ; 
the French guns being in position in front of their line, and doing 
severe damage among our horse especially, and on our right wing of 
Imperialists under the Prince of Savoy, who could neither advance 
his artillery nor his lines, the ground before him being cut up by 
ditches, morasses, and very difficult of passage for the gims. 

It was past mid-day when the attack began on our left, where 
Lord Cutts commanded, the bravest and most beloved officer in the 
English army. And now, as if to make his experience in war 
complete, our young aide-de-camp having seen two great armies 
facing each other in line of battle, 4xnd had the honour of riding 
■v\dth orders from one end to other of the line, came in (for a not 
uncommon accompaniment of military glory, and was knocked on 
the head, along with many hundred of brave fellows, almost at the 
very commencement of this famous day of Blenheim. A little after 
noon, the disposition for attack being completed with much delay 
and difficulty, and under a severe fire from the enemy’s guns, that 
were better posted and more numerous than ours, a body of English 
and Hessians, with Major-General Wilkes commanding at the 
extreme left of our line, marched upon Blenheim, advancing with 
great gallantry, the Major-General on foot, with his officers, at 
the head of the column, and marching, with his hat off, intrepidly 
in the face of the enemy, who was pouring in a tremendous fire 
from his guns and musketry, to which our people were instructed 
not to reply, except with pike and bayonet Avhen they reached the 
French palisades. To these Wilkes walked intrepidly, and struck 
the woodwork with his sword before our people charged it. He 
was shot down at the instant, with his colonel, major, and several 
officers ; and our troops cheering and huzzaing, and coming on, as 
they did, with immense resolution and gallantry, were nevertheless 
stopped by the murderous fire from behind the enemy’s defences, 
and then attacked in flank by a furious charge of French horse 
which swept out of Blenheim, and cut down our men in great 
numbers. Three fierce and desperate assaults of our foot were 
made and repulsed by the enemy ; so that our columns of foot were 
quite shattered, and fell back, scrambling over the little rivulet. 


218 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

which we had crossed so resolutely an hour before, and pursued 
by the French cavalry, slaughtering us and cutting us down. 

And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English 
horse under Esmond’s general. General Lumley, behind wdiose 
squadrons the flying foot found refuge, and formed again, whilst 
Lumley drove back the French horse, charging up to the village of 
Blenheim and the palisades where AVilkes, and many hundred more 
gallant Englishmen, lay in slaughtered heaps. Beyond this moment, 
and of this famous victory Mr. Esmond knows nothing ; for a shot 
brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, Avho fell 
crushed and stunned under the animal, and came to his senses he 
knows not how long after, only to lose them again from pain and 
loss of blood. A dim sense, as of people groaning round about him, 
a wild incoherent thought or two for her who occupied so much of 
his heart now, and that here his career, and his hopes, and mis- 
fortunes were ended, he remembers in the course of these hours. 
When he woke up, it was with a pang of extreme pain, his breast- 
plate was taken oft’, his servant was holding his head up, the good 
and faithful lad of Hampshire * was blubbering over his master, 
whom he found and had thought dead, and a surgeon was probing 
a wound in the shoulder, which he must have got at the same 
moment when his horse was shot and fell over him. The battle 
was over at this end of the field, by this time : the village was in 
possession of the English, its brave defenders prisoners, or fted, or 
drowned, many of them, in the neighbouring waters of Donau. But 
for honest Lockwood’s faithful search after his master, there had 
no doubt been an end of Esmond here, and of this his story. The 
marauders were out rifling the bodies as they lay on the field, and 
Jack had brained one of these gentry with the club-end of his 
musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his purse, 
and fine silver-mounted pistols which the Dowager gave him, and 
was fumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack 
Lockwood came up and put an end to the scoundrel’s triumph. 

Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and 
here for several weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life ; 
the wound was not very great from which he suffered, and the ball 
extracted by the surgeon on the spot where our young gentleman 
received it ; but a fever set in next day, as he was lying in hospital, . 
and that almost carried him aw^ay. Jack Lockwood said he talked 
in the wildest manner during his delirium ; that he called himself • 
the Marquis of Esmond, and seizing one of the surgeon’s assistants 
who came to dress his wounds, swore that he was Madame Beatrix, and 

* My mistress, before I went this campaign, sent me John Lockwood out of 
Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me. — H. E, 1 


EURYDICE 


21f) 


that he would make her a duchess if she would but say yes. He 
was passing the days in these crazy fancies, and vana somnia, whilst 
the army was singing “ Te Deum ” for the victory, and those famous ' 
festivities were taking place at which our Duke, now made a Prince 
of the Empire, was entertained by the King of the Romans and his 
nobility. His Grace went home by Berlin and Hanover, and 
Esmond lost the festivities which took place at those cities, and 
which his General shared in company of the other general officers 
who travelled with our great captain. When he could move, it was 
by the Duke of Wlirtemberg’s city of Stuttgard that he made his 
way homewards, revisiting Heidelberg again, whence he went to 
Mannheim, and hence had a tedious but easy water journey down 
the river of Rliine, which he had thought a delightful and beautiful 
voyage indeed, but that his heart was longing for home, and some- 
thing far more beautiful and delightful. 

As bright and welcome as the eyes almost of his mistress shone 
the lights of Harwich, as the packet came in from Holland. It 
was not many hours ere he, Esmond, was in London, of that you 
may be sure, and received with open arms by the old Dowager of 
Chelsey, who vowed, in her jargon of French and English, that 
he had the air noble, that his pallor embellished him, that he was 
an Amadis and deserved a Gloriana ; and oh ! flames and darts ! 
what was his joy at hearing that his mistress was come into wait- 
ing, and was now with her Majesty at Kensington ! Although Mr. 
Esmond had told Jack Lockwood to get horses and they would 
ride for Winchester that night, when he heard this news he counter- 
manded the horses at once ; his business lay no longer in Hants ; 
all his hope and desire lay within a couple of miles of him in 
Kensington Park wall. Poor Harry had never looked in the glass 
before so eagerly to see whether he had the hel air, and his paleness 
really did become him ; he never took such pains about the curl 
of his periwig, and tlie taste of his embroidery and point-lace, as 
now, before Mr. Amadis presented himself to Madam Gloriana. 
Was the fire of the French lines half so murderous as the killing 
glances from her Ladyship’s eyes 1 Oh ! darts and raptures, how 
beautiful were they ! 

And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades 
away in the sky almost invisible, Esmond thought, with a blush 
perhaps, of another sweet pale face, sad and faint, and fading 
out of sight, with its sweet fond gaze of affection ; such a last 
look it seemed to cast as Eurydice might have given, yearning 
after her lover, when Fate anil Pluto summoned her, and she 
])assed away into the shades. 


CHAPTER X - 

AN OLD STORY ABOUT A FOOL AND A IVOMAN 


ANY taste for pleasure which Esmond had (and he liked to 
desipere in loco, neither more nor less than most young men 

^ of his age) he could now gratify to the utmost extent, and 
in the best company which the town afforded. When the army 
went into winter quarters abroad, those of the officers who had 
interest or money easily got leave of absence, and found it much 
pleasanter to spend their time in Pall Mall and Hyde Park, than 
to pa§s the winter away behind the fortifications of the dreary 
old Flanders towns, where the English troops were gathered. 
Yachts and packets passed daily between the Dutcli and Flemish 
ports and Harwich ; the roads thence to London and the great inns 
were crowded with army gentlemen ; the taverns and ordinaries of 
the town swarmed with red-coats ; and our great Duke’s levies 
at St. James’s were as thronged as they had been at Ghent and 
Brussels, where we treated him, and he us, with the grandeur 
and ceremony of a sovereign. Though Esmond had been appointed 
to a lieutenancy in the Fusileer regiment, of which that celebrated 
officer. Brigadier John Richmond Webb, was colonel, he had never 
joined the regiment, nor been introduced to its excellent commander, 
though they had made the same campaign together, and been 
engaged in the same battle. But being aide-de-camp to General 
Lumley, who commanded the division of horse, and the army 
marching to its point of destination on the Danube by different 
routes, Esmond had not fallen in, as yet, with his commander 
and future comrades of the fort ; and it was in London, in Golden 
Square, where Major-General Webb lodged, that Captain Esmond 
had the honour of first paying his respects to his friend, patron, 
and commander of after days. 

Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman 
may recollect his character, upon which he prided himself, I think, 
not a little, of being the handsomest man in the army ; a poet who 
writ a dull copy of verses upon the battle of Oudenarde three years 
after, describing Webb, says : — 


BRIGADIER WEBB 


221 


“ To noble danger Webb conducts the way. 

His great exain2)le all his troops obey ; 

Before the front the General sternly rides, 
With such an air as Mars to battle strides ; 
Propitious Heaven must sure a hero save, 

Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave.” 


Mr. Webb thought these verses quite as fine as Mr. Addison’s 
on the Blenheim Campaign, and, indeed, to be Hector a la mode de 
Paris was part of this gallant gentleman’s ambition. It would 
have been difficult to find an officer in the whole army, or amongst 
the splendid courtiers and cavaliers of the Maison du Roy, that 
fought under Vendosme and Villeroy in the army opposed to ours, 
who was a more accomplished soldier and perfect gentleman, and 
either braver or better-looking. And if Mr. Webb believed of him- 
self what the world said of him, and was deeply convinced of his 
own indisputable genius, beauty, and valour, who has a right to 
quarrel with him very much ? This self-content of his kept him in 
general good-humour, of which his friends and dependants got the 
benefit. 

He came of a very ancient Wiltshire family, which he respected 
above all families in the world : he could prove a lineal descent 
from King Edward the First, and his first ancestor, Roaldus de 
Richmond, rode by William the Conqueror’s side on Hastings field. 
“ We were gentlemen, Esmond,” he used to say, “when the Churchills 
were horseboys.” He was a very tall man, standing in his pumps 
six feet three inches (in his great jack-boots, with his tall fair peri- 
wig, and hat and feather, he could not have been less than eight 
feet high). “ I am taller than Churchill,” he would say, surveying 
himself in the glass, “ and I am a better-made man ; and if the 
women won’t like a man that hasn’t a wart on his nose, faith, I 
can’t help myself, and Churchill has the better of me there.” In- 
deed, he was always measuring himself with the Duke, and always 
asking his friends to measure them. And talking in this frank 
way, as he would do, over his cups, wags would laugh and encour- 
age him ; friends would be sorry for him ; schemers and flatterers 
would egg him on, and tale-bearers carry the stories to head- 
quarters, and widen the difference which already existed there 
between the great captain and one of the ablest and bravest lieu- 
tenants he ever had. 

His rancour against the Duke was so apparent, that one saw it 
in the first half-hour’s conversation with General Webb ; and his 
lady, who adored her General, and thought him a hundred times 
taller, handsomer, and braver than a prodigal nature had made him, 
hated the great Duke with such an intensity as it becomes faithful 


222 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


wives to feel against their husbands’ enemies. Not that my Lord 
Duke was so yet ; Mr. Webb had said a thousand things against 
him, which his superior had pardoned ; and his Grace, whose spies 
were everywhere, had heard a thousand things more that Webb had 
never said. But it cost this great man no pains to pardon ; and he 
passed over an injury or a benefit alike easily. 

Should any child of mine take the pains to read these his 
ancestor’s memoirs, I would not have him judgo of the great Duke * 
by what a contemporary has written of him. No man hath been 
so immensely lauded and decried as this great statesman and warrior ; 
as, indeed, no man ever deserved better the very greatest praise and 
the strongest censure. If the present writer joins with the latter 
faction, very likely a private pique of his own may be the cause of 
his ill-feeling. 

On presenting himself at the Comniander-in-Chief’s lev^e, his 
Grace had not the least remembrance of General Lumley’s aide-de- 
camp, and though he knew Esmond’s family perfectly well, having 
served with both lords (my Lord Francis and the Viscount Esmond’s 
father) in Flanders, and in the Duke of York’s Guard, the Duke of 
Marlborough, who was friendly and serviceable to the (so-styled) 
legitimate representatives of the Viscount Castlewood, took no sort 
of notice of the poor lieutenant who bore their name. A word of 
kindness or acknowledgment, or a single glance of approbation, 
might have changed Esmond’s opinion of the great man ; and instead 
of a satire, which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that 
the humble historian might have taken the other side of panegyric '? 
We have but to change the point of view, and the greatest action 
looks mean ; as we turn the perspective-glass, and a giant appears 
a pigmy. You may describe, but who can tell whether your sight 
is clear or not, or your means of information accurate ? Had the 
great man said but a word of kindness to the small one (as he 
would have stepped out of his gilt chariot to shake hands with 
Lazarus in rags and sores, if he thought Lazarus could have been of 
any service to him), no doubt Esmond would have fought for him 
with pen and sword to the utmost of his might ; but my lord the 
lion did not want master mouse at this moment, and so Muscipulus 
went off and nibbled in opposition. 

So it was, however, that a young gentleman, who, in the eyes 
of his family, and in his own, doubtless, was looked upon as a 
consummate hero, found that the great hero of tlie day took no 

* This passage in the Memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf inserted into 
the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after he had heard of the Duchess’s 
death. 


223 


THE CONTROVERSY AT COURT 

more notice of him than of the smallest drummer in his Grace’s 
army. The Dowager of Chelsey was furious against this neglect of 
I her family, and had a great battle with Lady Marlborough (as Lady 
Castlewood insisted on calling the Duchess). Her Grace was now 
Mistress of the Robes to her Majesty, and one of the greatest per- 
sonages in this kingdom, as her husband was in all Europe, and the 
battle between the two ladies took place in the Queen’s drawing- 
room. 

The Duchess, in reply to my aunt’s eager clamour, said haughtily, 
that she had done her best for the legitimate branch of the Esmonds, 
and could not be expected to provide for the bastard brats of the 
family. 

“ Bastards ! ” says the Viscountess, in a fury. “ There are 
bastards among the Churchills, as your Grace knows, and the Duke 
of Berwick is provided for well enough.” 

“ Madam,” says the Duchess, “ you know whose fault it is 
that there are no such dukes in the Esmond family too, and how 
that little scheme of a certain lady miscarried.” 

Esmond’s friend, Dick Steele, who was in waiting on the 
Prince, heard the controversy between the ladies at Court. “ And 
faith,” says Dick, “ I think, Harry, thy kinswoman had the worst 
of it.” 

He could not keep the story quiet ; ’twas all over the coffee- 
houses ere night ; it was printed in a news-letter before a month 
was over, and “ The reply of her Grace the Duchess of M-rlb-r-gh 
to a Popish Lady of the Court, once a favourite of the late K — 
J-m-s,” was printed in half-a-dozen places, with a note stating 
that “ this Duchess, when the head of this lady’s family came by 
his death lately in a fatal duel, never rested until she got a pension 
for the orphan heir, and widow, from her Majesty’s bounty.” The 
s<iuabble did not advance poor Esmond’s promotion much, and 
indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show his 
face at the Commander-in-Chief’s levies again. 

During those eighteen months which had passed since Esmond 
saw his dear mistress, her good father, the old Dean, quitted this 
life, firm in his principles to the very last, and enjoining his family 
always to remember that the Queen’s brother. King James the 
Third, was their rightful sovereign. He made a very edifying end, 
as his daughter told Esmond, and not a little to her surprise, after 
his death (for he had lived always very poorly) my Lady found 
that her father had left no less a sum than £3000 behind him, 
which he bequeathed to her. 

With this little fortune Lady Castlewood was enabled, when 
her daughter’s turn at Court came, to (;ome to London, where she 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

took a siiiall genteel house at Kensiiigtoii, in the neighbourhood 
of the Court, bringing her children with lier, and here it was that 
Esmond found his friends. 

As for the young lord, his university career had ended ratlier 
abruptly. Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young 
gentleman quite ungovernable. My Lord worried his life away with 
tricks ; and broke out, as home-bred lads will, into a hundred youth- 
ful extravagances, so that Doctor Bentley, the new Master of Trinity, 
thought fit to write to the Viscountess Castle wood, my Lord’s 
mother, and beg her to remove the young nobleman from a college 
where he declined to learn, and where he only did harm by his 
riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to Nevil’s 
Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir 
Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor’s man 
that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank ; he gave a dinner- 
party on the Prince of Wales’s birthday, which was within a fort- 
night of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen then present 
sallied out after their wine, having toasted King James’s health with 
oj)en windows, and sung cavalier songs, and shouted “God save 
the King ! ” in the great court, so that the Master came out of his 
lodge at midnight, and dissipated the riotous assembly. 

This was my Lord’s crowning freak, and the Rev. Thomas 
Tusher, Domestic Chaplain to the Right Honourable the Lord 
Viscount Castlewood, finding his prayers and sermons of no earthly 
avail to his Lordship, gave up his duties of governor; went and 
married his brewer’s widow at Southampton, and took her and her 
money to his parsonage house at Castlewood. 

My Lady could not be angry with her son for drinking King 
James’s health, being herself a loyal Tory, as all the Castlewood 
family were, and acquiesced with a sigh, knowing, perhaps, that 
her refusal would be of no avail to the young lord’s desire for a 
military life. She would have liked him to be in Mr. Esmond’s 
regiment, hoping that Harry might act as a guardian and adviser 
to his wayward young kinsman ; but my young lord would hear 
of nothing but the Guards, and a (iommission was got for him in the 
Duke of Ormond’s regiment : so Esmond found my Lord ensign and 
lieutenant when he returned from Germany after the Blenheim 
campaign. 

The effect produced by both Lady Castlewood’s children when 
they appeared in public was extraordinary, and the whole town 
speedily rang with their fame : such a beautiful couple, it was 
declared, never had been seen ; the young maid of honour was 
toasted at every table and tavern, and as for my young lord, his 
good looks were even more admired than his sister’s. A hundred 


THE YOUNG PEOPLE 


225 


songs were written about the pair, and as the fashion of that day 
was, iny young lord was praised in these Anacreontics as warmly 
as Bathyllus. You may be sure that he accepted very complacently . 
the town’s opinion of him, and acquiesced with that frankness and 
charming good-huinour he always showed in the idea that he was 
the prettiest fellow in all London. 

The old Dowager at Chelsey, though she could never be got 
to acknowledge that Mistress Beatrix was any beauty at all (in which 
opinion, as it may be imagined, a vast number of the ladies agreed 
with her), yet, on the very first sight of young Castlewood, she 
owned she fell in love with him ; and Henry Esmond, on his return 
to Chelsey, found himself quite superseded in her favour by her 
younger kinsman. The feat of drinking the King’s health at Cam- 
bridge would have won her heart, she said, if nothing else did. 

“ How had the dear young fellow got such beauty 1 ” she asked. 
“Not from his father— certainly not from his mother. How had 
he come by such noble manners, and the perfect hel air .? That 
countrified Walcote widow could never have taught him.” Esmond 
had his own opinion about the countrified Walcote widow, who had 
a quiet grace and serene kindness, that had always seemed to him 
the perfection of good breeding, though he did not try to argue this 
point with his aunt. But he could agree in most of the praises 
which the enraptured old Dowager bestowed on my Lord Viscount, 
than whom he never beheld a more fascinating and charming gentle- 
man. Castlewood had not wit so much as enjoyment. “ The lad 
looks good things,” Mr. Steele used to say ; “ and his laugh lights 
up a conversation as much as ten repartees from Mr. Congreve. I 
would as soon sit over a bottle with him as with Mr. Addison ; and 
rather listen to his talk than hear Nicolini. Was ever man so 
gracefully drunk as my Lord Castlewood 1 I would give anything 
to carry my wine ” (though, indeed, Dick bore his very kindly, and 
plenty of it, too) “ like this incomparable young man. When he is 
sober he is delightful ; and when tipsy, perfectly irresistible.” And 
referring to his favourite, Shakspeare (who was quite out of fashion 
until Steele brought him back into the mode), Dick compared Lord 
Castlewood to Prince Hal, and was pleased to dub Esmond as 
Ancient Pistol. 

The Mistress of the Robes, the greatest lady in England after 
the Queen, or even before her Majesty, as the world said, thougli 
she never could be got to say a civil word to Beatrix, whom she 
had promoted to her place as maid of honour, took her brother into 
instant favour. When young Castlewood, in his new uniform, and 
looking like a prince out of a fairy tale, went to pay his duty to 
her Grace, she looked at liim for a minute in silence, the young 
7 P 


226 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


man blushing and in confusion before her, then fairly burst out 
a-crying, and kissed him before her daughters and company. “ He 
was my boy’s friend,” she said, through her sobs. “My Bland- 
ford might have been like him.” And everybody saw, after 
this mark of the Duchess’s favour, that my young Lord’s pro- 
motion was secure, and people crowded round the favourite’s 
favourite, who became vainer and gayer, and more good-humoured 


than ever. 

Meanwhile Madame Beatrix was making her conquests on her 
own side, and amongst them was one poor gentleman, who had been 
shot by her young eyes two years before, and had never been quite 
cured of that wound ; he knew, to be sure, how hopeless any passion 
might be, directed in that quarter, and had taken that best, though 
ignoble, remedium amoris^ a speedy retreat from before the charmer, 
and a long absence from her; and not being dangerously smitten 
in the first instance, Esmond pretty soon got the better of his com- 
plaint, and if he had it still, did not know he had it, and bore it 
easily. But when he returned after Blenheim, the young lady of 
sixteen, who had appeared the most beautiful object his eyes had 
ever looked on two years back, was now advanced to a perfect 
ripeness and perfection of beauty, such as instantly enthralled the 
poor devil, who had already been a fugitive from her charms. Then 
he had seen her but for two days, and fied; now he beheld her 
day after day, and when she was at Court watched after her ; when 
she was at home, made one of the family party ; when she went 
abroad, rode after her mother’s chariot ; when she appeared in 
public places, was in the box near her, or in the pit looking at 
her ; when she went to church was sure to be there, though he 
might not listen to the sermon, and be ready to hand her to her 
chair, if she deigned to accept of his services, and select him from 
a score of young men who were always hanging round about hei-. 
When she went away, accompanying her Majesty to Hampton 
Court, a darkness fell over London. Cods, what nights has 
Esmond passed, thinking of her, rhyming about her, talking about 
her ! His friend Dick Steele was at this time courting the young 
lady, Mrs. Scurlock, whom he married ; she had a lodging in 
Kensington Square, hard by my Lady Castlewood’s house there. 
Dick and Harry, being on the same errand, used to meet constantly 
at Kensington. They were always prowling about that place, or 
dismally walking thence, or eagerly running thither. They emptied 
scores of bottles at the “ King’s Arms,” each man prating of his 
love, and allowing the other to talk on condition that he might 
have his own turn as a listener. Hence arose an intimacy be- 
tween them, though to all the rest of their friends they must 


I RELAPSE INTO THE OLD FEVER 227 

have been insufferable. Esmond’s verses to “ Gloriana at the 
Harpsichord,” to “ Gloriana’s Nosegay,” to “Gloriana at Court,” 
appeared this year in the Obse^'vator . — Have you never read them'? , 
They were thought pretty poems, and attributed by some to 
Mr. Prior. 

This passion did not escape — how should it 1 — the clear eyes of 
Esmond’s mistress : he told her all ; what will a man not do when 
frantic with love'? To what baseness will he not demean himself? 
M hat pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his 
selfish heart of a part of its own pain ? Day after day he would 
seek his dear mistress, pour insane hopes, supplications, rhapsodies, 
raptures, into her ear. She listened, smiled, consoled, with untiring 
pity and sAveetness. Esmond was the eldest of her children, so she 
was pleased to say ; and as for her kindness, who ever had or Avould 
look for aught else from one Avho was an angel of goodness and pity? 
After what has been said, ’tis needless almost to add that poor 
Esmond’s suit was unsuccessful. What was a nameless, penniless 
lieutenant to do, when some of the greatest in the land were in the 
field? Esmond never so much as thought of asking permission to 
hope so far above his reach as he knew this ])rize was — and passed 
his foolish, useless life in mere abject sighs and impotent longing. 
What nights of rage, what days of torment, of passionate unfulfilled 
desire, of sickening jealousy can he recall ! Beatrix thought no 
more of him than of the lacquey that followed her chair. His com- 
plaints did not touch her in the least ; his raptures rather fatigued 
her ; she cared for his verses no more than for Dan Chaucer’s, who’s 
dead these ever so many hundred years ; she did not hate him ; she 
rather despised liim, and just suffered him. 

One day, after talking to Beatrix’s mother, his dear, fond, con- 
stant mistress — for hours— for all day long — pouring out his flame 
and his passion, his despair and rage, returning again and again to 
the theme, pacing the room, tearing up the flowers on the table, 
twisting and breaking into bits the wax out of the stand-dish, and 
performing a hundred mad freaks of passionate folly; seeing his 
mistress at last quite pale and tired out with sheer weariness of 
compassion, and watching over his fever for the hundredth time, 
Esmond seized up his hat and took his leave. As he got into 
Kensington Square, a sense of remorse came over him for the weari- 
some pain he had been inflicting upon the dearest and kindest friend 
ever man had. He Avent back to the house, where the servant still 
stood at the open door, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress 
Avhere he had left her in the embrasure of the window, looking 
over the fields towards Chelsey. She laughed, wiping aAvay at the 
same time the tears Avhich Avere in her kind eyes; he flung himself 


228 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

down on his knees, and buried his liead in her hq). She had in 
her hand the stalk of one of tlie flowers, a })ink, that he had torn 
to pieces. “ Oh, pardon me, pardon me, my dearest and kindest,” 
he said ; “ I am in hell, and you are the angel that brings me a 
drop of water.” 

“ I am your mother, you are my son, and I love you always,” 
she said, holding her hands over him : and he went away comforted 
and humbled in mind, as he thought of that amazing and constant 
love and tenderness with which this sweet lady ever blessed and 
pursued him. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE FAMOUS MR. JOSEPH ADDISON 


T he gentlemen-ushers had a table at Kensington and the Guard 
a very splendid dinner daily at St. James’s, at either of which 
ordinaries Esmond was free to dine. Dick Steele liked the 
Guard-table better than his own at the gentlemen-ushers’, where 
there was less wine and more ceremony ; and Esmond had many a 
jolly afternoon in company of his friend, and a hundred times at 
least saw Dick into his chair. If there is verity in wine, according 
to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick’s must 
have been ! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with 
kindness. His talk was not witty so much as charming. He never 
said a word that could anger anybody, and only became the more 
benevolent the more tipsy he grew. Many of the wags derided the 
poor fellow in his cups, and chose him as a butt for their satire : 
but there was a kindness about him, and a sweet playful fancy, 
that seemed to Esmond far more charming than the pointed talk 
of the brightest wits with their elaborate repartees and affected 
severities. I think Steele shone rather than sparkled. Those 
famous beaux-esj>rits of the coffee-houses (Mr. William Congreve, 
for instance, when his gout and his grandeur permitted him to come 
among us) would make many brilliant hits — half-a-dozen in a night 
sometimes — but, like sharpshooters, when they had fired their shot, 
they were obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded 
again, and wait till they got another chance at their enemy ; whereas 
Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at 
— only a friend to shake by the hand. The poor fellow had half 
the town in his confidence ; everybody knew everything about his 
loves and his debts, his creditors or his mistress’s obduracy. When 
Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick was all flames and 
raptures for a young lady, a West India fortune, whom he married. 
In a couple of years the lady was dead, the fortune was all but 
spent, and the honest widower was as eager in pursuit of a new 
paragon of beauty as if he had never courted and married and 
buried the last one. 

Quitting the Guard-table one Sunday afternoon, when by chance 


230 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Dick had a sober fit upon him, he and his friend were making their 
way down Grermain Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his com- 
panion’s arm, and ran after a gentleman who was poring over a 
folio volume at the book-shop near to St. James’s Church. He was 
a fair, tall man, in a snuff-coloured suit, with a plain sword, very 
sober and almost shabby in appearance — at least when compared 
to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his jolly round person with 
the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The 
Captain ruslied up, then, to the student of the' book-stall, took him 
in his arms, hugged him, and would have kissed him — for Dick wms 
always hugging and bussing his friends — but the other stepped back 
with a flush on his pale face, seeming to decline this public mani- 
festation of Steele’s regard. 

“My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this ageV’ 
cries the Captain, still holding both his friend’s hands ; “I have 
been languishing for thee this fortnight.” 

“ A fortnight is not an age, Dick,” says the other, very good- 
humouredly. (He had light-blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a 
face perfectly regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) “And 
I have been hiding myself — where do you think ? ” 

“ What ! not across the water, my dear Joe ? ” says Steele, 
with a look of great alarm : “thou knowest I have always •” 

“No,” says his friend, interrupting him with a smile : “we 
are not come to such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding, 
sir, at a place where people never think of finding you — at my own 
lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe now and drink a 
glass of sack : will your honour come ? ” 

“ Harry Esmond, come hither,” cries out Dick. “ Thou hast 
heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guardian 
angel 1 ” 

“ Indeed,” says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, “it is not from you 
only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good 
poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and I have some of 
yours by heart, though I have put on a red coat. . . . ‘0 qui 
canoro blandius Orpheo vocale duels carmen ; ’ shall I go on, sir ” 
says Mr. Esmond, who, indeed, had read and loved the charming 
Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew 
and admired them. 

“ This is Captain Esmond who was at Blenheim,” says Steele. 

“Lieutenant Esmond,” says the other, with a low bow, “at 
Mr. Addison’s service.” 

“I have heard of you,” says Mr. Addison, with a smile; as, 
indeed, everybody about town had heard tliat unlucky story about 
Esmond’s dowager aunt and the Duchess. 


MR. ADDISON 


231 


“We were going to the ‘George’ to take a bottle before the 
play,” says Steele : “ wilt thou be one, Joe ? ” 

Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he was , 
still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends ; and 
invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, 
whither we accordingly went. 

“ I shall get credit with my landlady,” says he, with a smile, 
“when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my stair.” 
And he politely made his visitors welcome to his apartment, which 
was indeed but a shabby one, though no grandee of the land could 
receive his guests with a more perfect and courtly grace than this 
gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting of a slice of meat and a 
penny loaf, was awaiting the owner of the lodgings. “ My wine is 
better than my meat,” says Mr. Addison ; “my Lord Halifax sent 
me the burgundy.” And he set a bottle and glasses before his 
friends, and ate his simple dinner in a very few minutes, after which 
the three fell to and began to drink. “You see,” says Mr. Addison, 
pointing to his writing-table, whereon was a map of the action at 
Hochstedt, and several other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the 
battle, “ that I, too, am busy about your affairs. Captain. I am 
engaged as a poetical gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem 
on the campaign.” 

So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew 
about the famous battle, drew the river on the table aliquo mero, 
and with the aid of some bits of tobacco-pipe showed the advance 
of the left wing, where he had been engaged. 

A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside our 
bottles and glasses, and Dick having plentifully refreshed himself 
from the latter, took up the pages of manuscript, writ out with 
scarce a blot or correction, in the author’s slim, neat handwriting’ 
and began to read therefrom with great emphasis and volubility. 
At pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader stopped and fired off 
a great salvo of applause. 

Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison’s friend. “ You 
are like the German Burghers,” says he, “ and the Princes on the 
Mozelle : when our army came to a halt, they always sent a depu- 
tation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their 
artillery from their walls.” 

“ And drunk the great chiefs health afterward, did not they 1 ” 
says Captain Steele, gaily filling up a bumper ; — he never was tardy 
at that sort of acknowledgment of a friend’s merit. 

“And the Duke, since you will have me act his Grace’s part,” 
says Mr. Addison, with a smile, and something of a blush, “ pledged 
his friends in return. Most Serene Elector of Covent Garden, I 


232 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


drink to your Highness’s health,” and he filled liimself a glass. 
Joseph required scarce more pressing than Dick to that sort of 
amusement; but the wine never seemed at all to fluster Mr. 
Addison’s brains ; it only unloosed his tongue : whereas Captain 
Steele’s head and speech were quite overcome by a single bottle. 

No matter what the verses were, and, to say truth, Mr. Esmond 
found some of them more than indifferent, Dick’s enthusiasm for 
his chief never faltered, and in every line from Addison’s pen Steele 
found a master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to that part 
of the poem wherein the bard describes as blandly as though he 
were recording a dance at the opera, or a harmless bout of bucolic 
cudgelling at a village fair, that bloody and ruthless part of our 
campaign, with the remembrance whereof every soldier who bore a 
part in it must sicken with shame — when we were ordered to ravage 
and lay waste the Elector’s country; and with fire and murder, 
slaughter and crime, a great part of his dominions was overrun - 
when Dick came to the lines — 

“ In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand 
With sword and fire, and ravages the land, 

In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, 

A thousand villages to ashes turn. 

To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat. 

And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. 

Their trembling lords the common shade partake. 

And cries of infants sound in every brake. 

The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands. 

Loth to obey his leader’s just commands. 

The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, 

To see his just commands so well obeyed — 

by this time wine and friendship had brought poor Dick to a 
perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccupped out the last line with 
a tenderness that set one of his auditors a-laughing. 

“I admire the licence of your poets,” says Esmond to Mr. 
Addison. (Dick, after reading of the verses, was fain to go off, 
insisting on kissing his two dear friends before his departure, and 
reeling away with his periwig over his eyes.) “ I admire your 
art : the murder of the campaign is done to military music, like a 
battle at the opera, and the virgins shriek in harmony as our 
victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you know what 
a scene it was ? ” — (by this time, perhaps, the wine had warmed 
Mr. Esmond’s head too) — “what a triumph you are celebrating? 
what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over which the 
commander’s genius presided, as calm as though he didn’t belong 
to our sphere 1 “ You talk of the ‘ listening soldier fixed in sorrow,’ 


ARS POETICA 


283 


the ‘ leader’s grief swayed by generous pity : ’ to my belief the 
leader cared no more for bleating flocks than he did for infants’ 
cries, and many of our rufflans butchered one or the other with 
ecpial alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade when I saw those 
horrors perpetrated which came under every man’s eyes. You hew 
out of your polished verses a stately image of smiling victory ; 
I tell you ’tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol ; hideous, bloody, 
and barbarous. The rites performed before it are shocking to think 
of. You great poets should show it as it is — ugly and horrible, 
not beautiful and serene. 0 sir, had you made the campaign, 
believe me, you never would have sung it so.” 

During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was listening, smoking 
out of his long pipe, and smiling very placidly. “ What would you 
have '? ” says he. “ In our polished days, and according to the 
rules of art, ’tis impossible that the Muse should depict tortures 
or begrime her hands with the horrors of war. These are indicated 
rather than described ; as in the Greek tragedies, thaf , I dare say, 
you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant specimens of 
composition), Agamemnon is slain, or Medea’s children destroyed, 
away from the scene ; — the chorus occupying the stage and singing 
of the action to pathetic music. Something of this I attempt, my 
dear sir, in my humble way : ’tis a panegyric I mean to write, 
and not a satire. Were I to sing as you would have me, the town 
would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of 
the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco 1 Of all the weeds 
grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary. 
We must paint our great Duke,” Mr. Addison went on, “not as a 
man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, 
but as a hero. ’Tis in a triumph, not a battle, that your humble 
servant is riding his sleek Pegasus. We college poets trot, you 
know, on very easy nags ; it hath been, time out of mind, part of 
the poet’s profession to celebrate the actions of heroes in verse, 
and to sing the deeds which you men of war perform. I must 
follow the rules of my art, and the composition of such a strain 
as this must be harmonious and majestic, not familiar, or too 
near the vulgar truth. Si parva licet : if Virgil could invoke 
the divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks of the Isis 
may celebrate a victory and a conqueror of our own nation, in 
whose triumphs every Briton has a share, and whose glory and 
genius contributes to every citizen’s individual honour. When 
hath there been, since our Henrys’ and Edwards’ days, such a 
great feat of arms as that from which you yourself have brought 
away marks of distinction 'i If ’tis in my power to sing that 
song worthily, I will do so, and be thankful to my Muse. If I 


234 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

fail as a poet, as a Briton at least I will show my loyalty, and 
fling up my cap and liuzzali for the conciiieror : 

“ ‘ . , . Rheni pacator et Istri, 

Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit 
Ordinibus; Isetatur eques, plauditque senator, 

Votaque patricio certant plebeia favori.’ ” 

“There were as brave men on that field,” says Mr. Esmond 
(who never could be made to love the Duke of Marlborough, nor 
to forget those stories which he used to hear in his youth regarding 
that great chiefs selfishness and treachery) — “ There were men at 
Blenheim as good as the leader, whom neither knights nor senators 
applauded, nor voices plebeian or patrician favoured, and who lie there 
forgotten, under the clods. What poet is there to sing them 1 ” 

“ To sing the gallant souls of heroes sent to Hades ! ” says Mr. 
Addison, with a smile. “Would you celebrate them all? If I 
may venture to question anything in such an admirable work, the 
catalogue of the ships in Homer hath always appeared to me as 
somewhat wearisome : w'^hat had the poem been, supposing the 
writer had chronicled the names of captains, lieutenants, rank and 
file ? One of the greatest of a great man’s qualities is success ; ’tis 
the result of all the others ; ’tis a latent power in him which 
compels the favour of the gods, and subjugates fortune. Of all 
his gifts I admire that one in the great Marlborough. To be 
brave? every man is brave. But in being victorious, as he is, I 
fancy there is something divine. In presence of the occasion, the 
great soul of the leader shines out, and the god is confessed. Death 
itself respects him, and passes by him to lay others low. War and 
carnage flee before him to ravage other parts of the field, as Hector 
from before the divine Achilles. You say he hath no pity : no 
more have the gods, who are above it, and superhuman. The 
fainting battle gathers strength at his aspect ; and, wherever he 
rides, victory charges with him.” 

A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond revisited his poetic 
friend, he found this thought, struck out in the fervour of con- 
versation, improved and shaped into those famous lines, which are 
in truth the noblest in the poem of the “ Campaign.” As the two 
gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with 
his customary pipe, the little maid-servant that waited on his 
lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that 
had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man’s levde. The 
courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round 
the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was the owner 
in his worn snuff-coloured suit and plain tie-wig. 


A MESSENGER OF FORTUNE 


235 


“ How goes on the magnum opus, Mr. Addison ? ” says the 
Court gentleman on looking down at the papers that were on the 
table. 

“ We were but now over it,” says Addison (the greatest courtier 
in the land could not have a more sxdendid politeness, or greater 
dignity of manner). “ Here is the plan,” says he, “ on the table : 
hac ibat Simois, here ran the little river Nebel : hie est Sigeia 
tellus, here are Tallard’s quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at 
the attack of which Captain Esmond was present. I have the 
honour to introduce liim to Mr. Boyle ; and Mr. Esmond was but 
now dex)icting aliquo proelia mixta niero, when you came in.” In 
truth, the two gentlemen had been so engaged when the visitor 
arrived, and Addison in his smiling way, speaking of Mr. Webb, 
colonel ■ of Esmond’s regiment (who commanded a brigade in the 
action, and greatly distinguished himself there), was lamenting 
that he could find never a suitable rhyme for Webb, otherwise 
the brigade should have had a place in the poet’s verses. “ And 
for you, you are but a lieutenant,” says Addison, “and the Muse 
can’t occupy herself with any gentleman under the rank of a field 
ofiicer.” 

Mr. Boyle was all impatient to hear, saying that my Lord 
Treasurer and my Lord Halifax were equally anxious ; and Addison, 
blushing, began reading of his verses, and, I suspect, knew their 
weak parts as well as the most critical hearer. When he came to 
the lines describing the angel, that 

“ Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 

And taught the doubtful battle where to rage, 

he read with great animation, looking at Esmond, as much as to 
say, “You know where that simile came from — from our talk, and 
our bottle of burgundy, the other day.” 

The poet’s two hearers were caught with enthusiasm, and 
applauded the verses with all tlieir might. The gentleman of the 
Court sprang up in great delight. “Not a word more, my dear 
sir,” says he. “Trust me with the papers— I’ll defend them with 
my life. Let me read them over to my Lord Treasurer, whom I 
am appointed to see in half-an-hour. I venture to promise, the 
verses shall lose nothing by my reading, and then, sir, we shall see 
whether Lord Halifax has a right to complain that his friend’s 
pension is no longer paid.” And without more ado, the courtier in 
lace seized the manuscript pages, placed them in his breast with his 
ruffled hand over his heart, executed a most gracious wave of the 
hat with the disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out of the 
room, leaving an odour of pomander behind him. 


236 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“ Does not the chamber look quite dark ? ” says Addison, survey- 
ing it, “ after the glorious appearance and disappearance of that 
gracious messenger ? Wliy, he illuminated the whole room. Your 
scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any light ; but this threadbare old 
coat of mine, how very worn it looked under the glare of that 
splendour ! I wonder whether they will do anything for me,” he 
continued. “ Wlien I came out of Oxford into the world, my patrons 
promised me great things ; and you see where their promises have 
landed me, in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny dinner 
from the cook’s shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after 
the others, and Fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any 
time these seven years. ‘ I puff the prostitute away,’ ” says he, 
smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. There is no hardship 
in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable ; no hardship even in 
honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I 
came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of 
me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and 
learning which had got me no small name in our college. The world 
is the ocean, and Isis and Charwell are but little drops, of which 
the sea takes no account. My reputation ended a mile beyond 
Maudlin Tower ; no one took note of me ; and I learned this at 
least, to bear up against evil fortune with a cheerful heart. Friend 
Dick hath made a figure in the world, and has passed me in the 
race long ago. What matters a little name or a little fortune? 
There is no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been 
not unknown as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear- 
leader, and teaching a boy to spell. What then ? The life was not 
pleasant, but possible — the bear was bearable. Should this venture 
fail, I will go back to Oxford ; and some day, when you are a general, 
you shall find me a curate in a cassock and bands, and I shall 
welcome your honour to my cottage in the country, and to a mug of 
penny ale. ’Tis not poverty that’s the hardest to bear, or the least 
happy lot in life,” says Mr. Addison, shaking the ash out of his 
pipe. “ See, my pipe is smoked out. Shall we have another 
bottle ? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of the right sort. 
No more ? Let us go abroad and take a turn on the Mall, or look 
in at the theatre and see Dick’s comedy. ’Tis not a masterpiece of 
wit ; but Dick is a good fellow, though he doth not set the Thames 
on fire.” 

Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison’s ticket had come 
up a prodigious prize in the lottery of life. All the town was in 
an uproar of admiration of his poem, the “ Campaign,” which Dick 
Steele was spouting at every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent 
Darden. The wits on the other side of Temple Bar saluted him at 


I RETURN TO FLANDERS 


237 


once as the greatest poet the world had seen for ages ; the people 
huzzahed for Marlborough and for Addison, and, more than this, 
the party in power provided for the meritorious poet, and Mr. , 
Addison got the appointment of Commissioner of Excise, which the 
famous Mr. Locke vacated, and rose from this place to other dignities 
and honours ; his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life 
being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt whether he was not 
happier in his garret in the Haymarket, than ever he was in his 
splendid palace at Kensington ; and I believe the fortune that came 
to him in the shape of the countess his wife, was no better than a 
shrew and a vixen. 

Gay as the town was, Twas but a dreary place for Mr. Esmond, 
whether his charmer was in or out of it, and he was glad when his 
General gave him notice that he w^as going back to his division of 
the army which lay in winter quarters at Bois-le-Duc. His dear 
mistress bade him farewell with a clieerful face; her blessing he 
knew he had always, and wheresoever fate carried him. Mistress 
Beatrix was away in attendance on her Majesty at Hampton Court, 
and kissed her fair finger-tips to him, by way of adieu, when he 
rode thither to take his leave. She received her kinsman in a 
waiting-room where there were half-a-dozen more ladies of the Court, 
so that his high-flown speeches, had he intended to make any (and 
very likely he did), were impossible ; and she announced to her 
friends that her cousin was going to the army, in as easy a manner 
as she would have said he was going to a chocolate house. He 
asked with a rather rueful face if she had any orders for the army 1 
and she was pleased to say that she would like a mantle of Mechlin 
lace. She made him a saucy curtsey in reply to his own dismal 
bow. She deigned to kiss her finger-tips from the window, where 
slie stood laughing with the other ladies, and chanced to see him as 
he made his way to the “ Toy.” The Dowager at Chelsey was not 
sorry to part with him this time. “Mon cher, vous etes triste 
comme un sermon,” she did him the honour to say to him ; indeed, 
gentlemen in his condition are by no means amusing companions, 
and besides, the fickle old woman had now found a much more 
amiable favourite, and raffole'd for her darling lieutenant of the 
Guard. Frank remained behind for a while, and did not join the 
army till later, in the suite of his Grace the Commander-in-Chief. 
His dear mother, on the last day before Esmond went away, and 
when the three dined together, made Esmond promise to befriend 
her boy, and besought Frank to take the example of his kinsman as 
of a loyal gentleman and brave soldier, so she was pleased to say ; 
and at parting, betrayed not the least sign of faltering or weakness, 


238 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


though, God knows, that fond heart was fearful enough when others 
were concerned, though so resolute in bearing its own pain. 

Esmond’s General embarked at Harwich. ’Twas a grand sight 
to see Mr. Webb dressed in scarlet on the deck, waving his hat as 
our yacht put off, and the guns saluted from the shore. Harry did 
not see ids Viscount again, until three months after, at Bois-le-Duc, 
when his Grace the Duke came to take the command, and Frank 
brouglit a budget of news from home : how he had supped Avith 
this actress, and got tired of that ; how he had got the better of 
Mr. St. John, both over the bottle, and with Mrs. Mountford, of 
the Haymarket Theatre (a veteran charmer of fifty, with whom the 
young scapegrace chose to fancy himself in love) ; how his sister 
was always at her tricks, and had jilted a young baron for an old 
earl. “ I can’t make out Beatrix,” he said; “she cares for none 
of us — she only thinks about herself ; she is never happy unless she 
is quarrelling ; but as for my mother — my mother, Harry, ' is an 
angel.” Harry tried to impress on the young fellow the necessity 
of doing everything in his power to please that angel : not to drink 
too much ; not to go into debt ; not to run after the pretty Flemish 
girls, and so forth, as became a senior speaking to a lad. “ But 
Lord bless thee ! ” the boy said ; “I may do what I like, and I 
know she will love me all the same ; ” and so, indeed, he did what 
he liked. Everybody spoiled him, and his grave kinsman as much- 
as the rest. 


CHAPTER XII 

I GET A COMPANY IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1706 

N A\hit Sunday, the famous 23rd of May 1706, my young 
lord first came under tlie fire of the enemy, wliom we found 



posted ill order of battle, their lines extending three miles 
or more, over the liigh ground behind the little Gheet liver, and 
having on his left the little village of Anderkirk or Autre-dglise, 
and on his right Ramillies, which has given its name to one of the 
most brilliant and disastrous days of battle that history ever hath 
recorded. 

Our Duke here once more met his old enemy of Blenheim, the 
Bavarian Elector and the Mardchal Villeroy, over whom the Prince 
of Savoy had gained the famous victory of Chiari. What English- 
man or Frenchman doth not know the issue of that day 1 Having 
chosen his own ground, having a force superior to the English, and 
besides the excellent Spanish and Bavarian troops, the whole 
Maison-du-Roy with him, the most splendid body of horse in the 
world, — in an hour (and in spite of the prodigious gallantry of the 
French Royal Household, who charged through the centre of our 
line and broke it) this magnificent army of Villeroy was utterly 
routed by troops that had been marching for twelve hours, and by 
the intrepid skill of a commander who did, indeed, seem in the pre- 
sence of the enemy to be the very Genius of Victory. 

I think it was more from conviction than policy, though that 
policy was surely the most prudent in the world, that the great 
Duke always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, 
and as if it was not so much his own admirable genius and courage 
which achieved these amazing successes, but as if he was a special 
and fatal instrument in the hands of Providence, that willed irre- 
sistibly the enemy’s overthrow. Before his actions he always had 
the Church service read solemnlj’’, and professed an undoubting 
belief that our Queen’s arms were blessed and our victory sure. 
All the letters which he writ after his battles show awe rather than 
exultation ; and he attributes the glory of these achievements, about 
which I have heard mere petty officers and men bragging with a 
pardonable vain-glory, in nowise to his own bravery or skill, but to 


240 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


the superintending protection of Heaven, which he ever seemed to 
think was our especial ally. And our army got to believe so, and 
the enemy learnt to think so too ; for we never entered into a battle 
without a perfect confidence that it was to end in a victory ; nor did 
the French, after the issue of Blenlieim, and tliat astonishing triumph 
of Ramillies, ever meet us without feeling that the game was lost | 
before it was begun to be played, and that our General’s fortune was 
irresistible. Here, as at Blenheim, the Duke’s charger was shot, and 
’twas thought for a moment he was dead. As he mounted another, 
Binfield, his master of the horse, kneeling to hold his Grace’s stirnij), 
had his head shot away by a cannon-ball. A French gentleman of 
the Royal Household, that was a prisoner with us, told the writer 
that at the time of the charge of the Household, when their horse 
and ours were mingled, an Irish officer recognised the Prince-Duke, 
and calling out “ Marlborough, Marlborough ! ” fired his pistol at 
him a hout-portant^ and that a score more carbines and pistols were 
discharged at him. Not one touched him : he rode tlirough the 
Frencli Cuirassiers sword in hand, and entirely unhurt, and calm 
and smiling, rallied the German Horse, that was reeling before the 
enemy, brought these and twenty squadrons of Orkney’s back upon 
them, and drove the French across the river, again leading the 
charge himself, and defeating the only dangerous move the French 
made that day. 

Major-General Webb commanded on the left of our line, and 
had his own regiment under the orders of their beloved colonel. 
Neither he nor they belied their character for gallantry on this 
occasion ; but it was about his dear young lord tliat Esmond was 
anxious, never having sight of him save once, in the whole course of 
the day, when he brought an order from the Commander-in-Chief to 
Mr. Webb. When our horse, having charged round the right flank 
of the enemy by Overkirk, had thrown him into entire confusion, a 
general advance was made, and our whole line of foot, crossing the 
little river and the morass, ascended the high ground where the 
French were posted, cheering as they went, the enemy retreating 
before them. ’Twas a service of more glory than danger, the French 
battalions never waiting to exchange push of pike or bayonet with 
ours ; and the gunners flying from their pieces, which our line left 
behind us as they advanced, and the French fell back. 

At first it was a retreat orderly enough ; but presently the re- 
treat became a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued 
on this panic : so that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly 
crushed and destroyed in the course of a couple of hours. It was 
as if a hurricane had seized a compact numerous fleet, flung it all 
to the winds, shattered, sunk, and annihilated it : ajffiavit Deus, et 


RAMILLIES 


241 


clissipati sunt. The French army of Flanders was gone; their 
artillery, their standards, their treasure, provisions, and ammunition 
were all left behind them : the poor devils had even fled without , 
their soup-kettles, which are as much the palladia of the French 
infantry as of the Grand Seignior’s Janissaries, and round which 
they rally even more than round their lilies. 

The pursuit, and a dreadful carnage which ensued (for the dregs 
of a battle, however brilliant, are ever a base residue of rapine, 
cruelty, and drunken plunder), was carried far beyond the field of 
Ramillies. 

Honest Lockwood, Esmond’s servant, no doubt wanted to be 
among the marauders himself and take his share of the booty ; for 
when, the action over, and the troops got to their ground for 
the night, the Captain bade Lockwood get a horse, he asked, with 
a very rueful countenance, whether his honour would have him 
come too ; but his honour only bade him go about his own business, 
and Jack hopped away quite delighted as soon as he saw his master 
mounted. Esmond made his way, and not without danger and 
difficulty, to his Grace’s headquarters, and found for himself very 
quickly where the aides-de-camp’s quarters were, in an outbuilding 
of a farm, where several of these gentlemen were seated, drinking 
and singing, and at supper. If he had any anxiety about his boy, 
’twas relieved at once. One of the gentlemen was singing a song 
to a tune that Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Gay both had used in their 
admirable comedies, and very popular in the army of that day ; and 
after the song came a chorus, Over the hills and far away ; ” and 
Esmond heard Frank’s fresh voice, soaring, as it were, over the 
songs of the rest of the young men— a voice that had always a 
certain artless, indescribable pathos with it, and indeed which caused 
Mr. Esmond’s eyes to fill with tears now, out of thankfulness to God 
the child was safe and still alive to laugh and sing. 

When the song was over, Esmond entered the room, where he 
knew several of the gentlemen present, and there sat my young lord, 
having taken off his cuirass, his waistcoat open, his face flushed, his 
long yellow hair hanging over his shoulders, drinking with the rest ; 
the youngest, gayest, handsomest there. As soon as he saw Esmond, 
he clapped down his glass, and running towards his friend, put both 
his arms round him and embraced him. The other’s voice trembled 
with joy as he greeted the lad ; he had thought but now as he 
stood in the courtyard under the clear-shining moonlight ; “ Great 
God ! what a scene of murder is here within a mile of us ; what 
hundreds and thousands have faced danger to-day ; and here are 
these lads singing over their cups, and the same moon that is shining 
over yonder horrid field is looking down on Walcote very likely, 

7 Q 


242 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


while my Lady sits and thinks about her boy that is at the war.” 
As Esmond embraced liis young pupil now, ’twas with a feeling of 
quite religious thankfulness and an almost paternal pleasure that he 
beheld him. 

Round his neck was a star with a striped riband, that was made 
of small brilliants and might be worth a hundred crowns. “ Look,” 
says he, “won’t that be a pretty present for mother 1” 

“ Who gave you the Order ? ” says Harry, saluting the gentle- 
men : “ did you win it in battle ? ” 

“ I won it,” cried the other, “ with my sword and my spear. 
There was a mousquetaire that had it round his neck— such a big 
mousquetaire, as big as General Webb. I called out to him to 
surrender, and that I’d give him quarter : he called me a petit 
polisson and fired his pistol at me, and then sent it at my head with 
a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword right under his arm- 
hole, and broke it in the rascal’s body. I found a purse in his 
holster with sixty-five Louis in it, and a bundle ofTove-letters, and 
a flask of Hungary-water. Vive la guerre ! there are the ten 
pieces you lent me. I should like to have a fight every day ; ” and 
he pulled at his little moustache and bade a servant bring a supper 
to Captain Esmond. 

Harry fell to with a very good appetite : he had tasted nothing 
since twenty hours ago, at early dawn. Master Grandson, who 
read this, do you look for the liistory of battles and sieges 1 Go, 
find them in the proper books ; this is only the story of your grand- 
father and his family. Far more pleasant to him than the victory, 
though for that too he may say meminis^e juvat^ it w^as to find 
that the day was over, and his dear young Castlewood was unhurt. 

And would you, sirrah, wish to know how it was that a sedate 
Captain of Foot, a studious and rather solitary bachelor of eight or 
nine and twenty years of age, who did not care very much for the 
jollities which his comrades engaged in, and was never known to 
lose his heart in any garrison-town — should you wish to know why 
such a man had so prodigious a tenderness, and tended so fondly a 
boy of eighteen, wait, my good friend, until thou art in love with 
thy schoolfellow’s sister, and then see how mighty tender thou wilt 
be towards him. Esmond’s General and his Grace the Prince-Duke 
were notoriously at variance, and the former’s friendship was in 
nowise likely to advance any man’s promotion of whose services 
Webb spoke well; but rather likely to injure him, so the army 
said, in the favour of the greater man. However, Mr. Esmond had 
the good fortune to be mentioned very advantageously by Major- 
General Webb in his report after the action ; and the major of his 
regiment and two of the captains having been killed upon the day 


NEWS FROM HOME 


243 


of Ramillies, Esmond, who was second of the lieutenants, got his 
company, and had tlie honour of serving as Captain Esmond in the 
next campaign. 

My Lord went home in the winter, but Esmond was afraid to 
follow him. His dear mistress wrote him letters more than once, 
thanking him, as mothers know how to thank, for his care and pro- 
tection of her boy, extolling Esmond’s own merits with a great deal 
more praise than they deserved ; for he did his duty no better than 
any other officer ; and speaking sometimes, though gently and 
cautiously, of Beatrix. News came from home of at least half-a- 
dozen grand matches that the beautiful maid of honour was about 
to make. She was engaged to an earl, our gentleman of St. James’s 
said, and then jilted him for a duke, who, in his turn, had drawn 
off. Earl or duke it might be who should win this Helen, Esmond 
knew she would never bestow herself on a poor captain. Her con- 
duct, it was clear, was little satisfactory to her mother, who scarcely 
mentioned her, or else the kind lady thought it was best to say 
nothing, and leave time to work out its cure. At any rate, Harry 
was best away from the fatal object which always wrought him so 
much mischief ; and so he never asked for leave to go home, but 
remained with his regiment that was garrisoned in Brussels, which 
city fell into our hands when the victory of Ramillies drove the 
French out of Flanders. 


CHAPTER XIII 


/ MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDERS, AND FIND MY 
MOTHER'S GRAVE AND MY OlVN CRADLE THERE 

B eing one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, ad- 
miring the antique splendour of the architecture (and always 
entertaining a great tenderness and reverence for the Mother 
Church, that hath been as wickedly persecuted in England as ever 
she herself persecuted in the days of her prosperity), Esmond saw 
kneeling at a side altar an officer in a green uniform coat, very 
deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in the figure and 
posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even before he 
saw the officer’s face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket 
a little black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld a counte- 
nance so like that of his friend and tutor of early days. Father Holt, 
that he broke out into an exclamation of astonishment and advanced 
a step towards the gentleman, who was making his way out of 
church. The German officer too looked surprised when he saw 
Esmond, and his face from being pale grew suddenly red. By this 
mark of recognition the Englishman knew that he could not be 
mistaken ; and though the other did not stop, but on the contrary 
rather hastily walked away towards the door, Esmond pursued him 
and faced him once more, as the officer, helping himself to holy 
water, turned mechanically towards the altar, to bow to it ere he 
quitted the sacred edifice. 

‘‘ My Father ! ” says Esmond in English. 

“ Silence ! I do not understand. I do not speak English,” says 
the other in Latin. 

Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the same 
language, “I should know my Father in any garment, black or 
white, shaven or bearded ; ” for the Austrian officer was habited 
quite in the military manner, and had as warlike a mustachio as 
any Pandour. 

He laughed — we were on the church steps by this time, passing 
through the crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little 
trinkets for sale and whining for alms. “You speak Latin,” says 
lie, “ in the English way, Harry Esmond ; you have forsaken the 


A JESUIT CAPTAIN 


245 


old true Roman tongue you once knew.” His tone was very frank, 
and quite friendly ; the kind voice of fifteen years back ; he gave 
Esmond his hand as he spoke. 

“ Others have changed their coats too, my Father,” says Esmond, 
glancing at his friend’s military decoration. 

“ Hush ! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian 
Elector’s service, and on a mission to his Highness the Prince of 
Savoy. You can keep a secret I know from old times.” 

“ Captain von Holtz,” says Esmond, “ I am your very humble 
servant.” 

“ And you, too, have changed your coat,” continues the other in 
his laughing way. “ I have heard of you at Cambridge and after- 
wards : we have friends everywhere ; and I am told that Mr. 
Esmond at Cambridge was as good a fencer as he was a bad theo- 
logian.” (So, thinks Esmond, my old mattre d^armes was a Jesuit, 
as they said.) 

“ Perhaps you are right,” says the other, reading his thoughts 
quite as he used to do in old days ; “ you w’-ere all but killed at 
Hochstedt of a wound in the left side. You were before that at 
Vigo, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Ormonde. You got your company 
the other day after Ramillies ; your General and the Prince-Duke 
are not friends ; he is of the Webbs of Lydiard Tregoze, in the 
county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John. Your cousin, 
M. de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in the Guard. 
Yes, I do know a few things, as you see.” 

Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. “You have indeed a 
curious knowledge,” he says. A foible of Mr. Holt’s, who did know 
more about books and men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond 
had ever met, was omniscience ; thus in every point he here pro- 
fessed to know, he was nearly right, but not quite. Esmond’s 
wound was in the right side, not the left ; his first general was 
General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out of 
Yorkshire ; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his 
old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a 
knowledge of the other’s character, and he smiled to think that this 
was his oracle of early days ; only now no longer infallible or divine. 

“Yes,” continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, “for a 
man who has not been in England these eight years, I know what 
goes on in London very well. The old Dean is dead, my Lady 
Castlewood’s father. Do you know that your recusant bishops 
wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, and that Collier 
is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition 1 The Princess Anne 
has the gout and eats too much ; when the King returns. Collier 
will be an archbishop.” 


246 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


“Amen!” says Esmond, langlung; “and I hope to see your 
Eminence no longer in jackboots, but red stockings, at Wliiteliall.” 

“You are always with us — I know that — I heard of that when 
you were at Cambridge ; so was the late lord ; so is the young 
viscount.” 

.. “ And so was my father before me,” said Mr. Esmond, looking 

calmly at the other, who did not, however, show the least sign of 
intelligence in his impenetrable grey eyes — how well Harry remem- 
bered them and their look ! only crows’-feet were wrinkled round 


1 


them — marks of black old Time had settled there. 

Esmond’s face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the 
Father’s. There may have been on the one side and the other 
just the faintest glitter of recognition, as you see a bayonet shining 
out of an ambush ; but each party fell back, when everything was 
again dark. 

“ And you, mon capitaine, where have you been 1 ” says Esmond, 

. turning away the conversation from this dangerous ground, where 
neither chose to engage. 

“ I may have been in Pekin,” says he, “or I may have been 
in Paraguay — who knows where? I am now Captain von Holtz, 
in the service of his Electoral Highness, come to negotiate exchange 
of prisoners with his Highness of Savoy.” 

’Twas well known that very many officers in our army were 
well affected towards the young King at St. Germains, whose right 
to the throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the 
death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people 
would have preferred, to the having a petty German ywince for 
a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and 
odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded 
our English pride to think that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose 
revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes 
of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of our 
language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German 
boor, feeding on train-oil and sour-crout with a bevy of mistresses 
in a barn, should come to reign over the proudest and most 
polished people in the world. Were we, the conquerors of the 
Grand Monarch, to submit to that ignoble domination? What 
did the Hanoverian’s Protestantism matter to us? Was it not 
notorious (we were told and led to believe so) that one of the 
daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no 
religion at all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, 
according as the husband might be whom her parents should find 
for her? This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was, went 
on at a hundred mess-tables in the army ; there was scarce an 


A NEGOTIATOR 


247 


ensign tluit tlid not hear it, or join in it, and everybody knew, or 
affected to know, that the Coinniander-in-Chief himself had relations 
with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick (’twas by an Englishman, 
thank God, that we were beaten at Almanza), and that his Grace 
was most anxious to restore the royal race of his benefactors, and 
to repair his former treason. 

This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in the 
Duke’s army lost favour with the Commander-in-Chief for entertain- 
ing or proclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When 
the Chevalier de St. George, as the King of England called himself, 
came with the dukes of the French blood royal, to join the French 
army under Vendosme, hundreds of ours saw him and cheered him, 
and we all said he was like his father in this, who, seeing the 
action of La Hogue fought between the French ships and ours, was 
on the side of his native country during the battle. But this at 
least the Chevalier knew, and every one knew, that, however well 
our troops and their general might be inclined towards the Prince 
personally, in the face of the enemy there was no question at all. 
Wherever my Lord Duke found a French army, he would fight 
and beat it, as he did at Oudenarde, two years after Ramillies, 
where his Grace achieved another of his transcendent victories ; 
and the noble young Prince, who charged gallantly along with the 
magnificent Maison-du-Roy, sent to compliment his conquerors after 
the action. 

In this battle, where the young Electoral Prince of Hanover 
behaved himself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond’s dear 
General Webb distinguished himself prodigiously, exhibiting con- 
summate skill and coolness as a general, and fighting with the personal 
bravery of a common soldier. Esmond’s good-luck again attended 
him; he escaped without a hurt, although more than a third of 
his regiment was killed, had again the honour to be favourably 
mentioned in his commander’s report, and was advanced to the rank 
of major. But of this action there is little need to speak, as it hath 
been related in every Gazette, and talked of in every hamlet in 
tliis country. To return from it to the writer’s private affairs, 
which here, in his old age, and at a distance, he narrates for his 
children who come after him. Before Oudenarde, after that chance 
rencontre with Captain von Holtz at Brussels, a space of more than 
a year elapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and the Captain 
of Webb’s Fusileers were thrown very much together. Esmond 
had no difficulty in finding out (indeed, the other made no secret 
of it to him, being assured from old times of his pupil’s fidelity) 
that the negotiator of prisoners was an agent from St. Germains, 
and that he carried intelligence between great personages in our 


248 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

camp and that of the French. “ My business,” said he — “ and 
I tell you, both because I can trust you and your keen eyes have 
already discovered it— is between the King of England and his sub- 
jects here engaged in fighting the French King. As between you and 
them, all the Jesuits in the world will not prevent your quarrelling : 
fight it out, gentlemen. St. George for England, I say — and you 
know who says so, wherever he may be.” 

I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and 
would appear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used 
to return and vanish in the old days at Oastlewood. He had 
passes between both armies, and seemed to know (but with that 
inaccuracy which belonged to the good Father’s omniscience) equally 
well what passed in the French camp and in ours. One day he 
would give Esmond news of a great feste that took place in the 
French quarters, of a supper of Monsieur de Rohan’s where there 
was play and violins, and then dancing and masques ; the King 
drove thither in Marshal Villars’ own guinguette. Another day 
he had the news of his Majesty’s ague : the King had not had a 
fit these ten days, and might be said to be well. Captain 
Holtz made a visit to England during this time, so eager w^as he 
about negotiating prisoners; and ’twas on returning from this 
voyage that he began to open himself more to Esmond, and to 
make him, as occasion served, at their various meetings, several 
of those confidences which are here set down all together. 

The reason of his increased confidence Avas this : upon going 
to London, the old director of Esmond’s aunt, the Dowager, paid 
her Ladyship a visit at Chelsey, and there learnt from her that 
Captain Esmond was acquainted with the secret of his family, and 
was determined never to divulge it. The knowledge of this fact 
. raised Esmond in his old tutor’s eyes, so Holt was pleased to say, 
and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation. 

“The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than 
my own ever did,” Esmond said. “ I would give my life for them. 
Why should I grudge the only benefit that ’tis in my power to 
confer on them? ” The good Father’s eyes filled with tears at this 
speech, which to the other seemed very simple : he embraced 
Esmond, and broke out into many admiring expressions ; he said he 
was a noble coeur, that he was proud of him, and fond of him as 
his pupil and friend — regretted more than ever that he had lost him, 
and been forced to leave him in those early times, when he might 
' have had an influence over him, have brought him into that only 
true Church to which the Father belonged, and enlisted him in 
the noblest army in which a man ever engaged — meaning his own 
Society of Jesus, which numbers (says he) in its troops the greatest 


FATHER HOLT FLATTERS ME 


249 


lieroes the world ever knew : — warriors brave enough to dare or 
endure anything, to encounter any odds, to die any death ; — soldiers 
that have won triumphs a thousand times more brilliant than those of 
the greatest general ; that have brought nations on their knees' to 
their sacred banner, the Cross ; that have achieved glories and 
palms incomparably brighter than those awarded to the most splendid 
earthly conquerors — crowns of immortal light, and seats in the high 
places of heaven. 

Esmond was thankful for his old friend’s good opinion, however 
little he might share the Jesuit Father’s enthusiasm. “ I have 
thought of that question, too,” says he, “ dear Father,” and he took 
the other’s hand — “ thought it out for myself, as all men must, 
and contrive to do the right, and trust to Heaven as devoutly in 
my way as you in yours. Another six months of you as a child, 
and I had desired no better. I used to weep upon my pillow at 
Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been a brother 
of your order; and who knows,” Esmond added with a smile, “a 
priest in full orders, and with a pair of mustachios, and a Bavarian 
uniform 1 ” 

“My son,” says Father Holt, turning red, “in the cause of 
religion and loyalty all disguises are fair.” 

“ Yes,” broke in Esmond, “ all disguises are fair, you say ; and 
all uniforms, say I, black or red, — a black cockade or a white one 
— or a laced hat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it. I cannot 
believe that Saint Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, 
or raised the dead — I tried, and very nearly did once, but cannot. 
Suffer me to do the right, and to hope for the best in my 
own way.’ 

Esmond wished to cut short the good Father’s theology, and 
succeeded ; and the other, sighing over his pupil’s invincible igno- 
rance, did not withdraw his affection from him, but gave him his 
utmost confidence — as much, that is to say, as a priest can give : 
more than most do ; for he was naturally garrulous, and too eager 
to speak. 

Holt’s friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he 
long wished to know, and none could tell him, some history of the 
poor mother whom he had often imagined in his dreams, and whom 
he never knew. He described to Holt those circumstances which 
are already put down in the first part of this story— the promise he 
liad made to his dear lord, and that dying friend’s confession ; and 
he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regarding tlie poor 
woman from whom he had been taken. 

“ Slie iwas of this very town,” Holt said, and took Esmond to 
see the street where her father lived, and where, as he believed. 


250 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


she was born. “In 1679, when your father came liither in the 
retinue of the late King, then Duke of York, and banished hither 
in disgrace. Captain Thomas Esmond became acquainted with your 
mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her ; he hath told me 
in many subsequent conversations, which I felt bound to keep 
private then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, 
and in all respects a most fond, faithful creature. He called him- 
self Captain Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his con- 
duct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincere 
remorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities. 
He owned to having treated her very ill : and that at this time 
his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became 
with child of you ; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery ; 
though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and 
the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her wretched- 
ness and ruin. 

“ Thomas Esmond — Captain Thomas, as he was called — became 
engaged in a gaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a 
duel, and a wound so severe that he never — his surgeon said — could 
outlive it. Thiid^ing his death certain, and touched with remorse, 
he sent for a priest of the very Church of St. Gudule where I met 
you ; and on the same day, after his making submission to our 
Church, was married to your mother a few weeks before you were 
born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Marquis of Esmond, by King 
James’s patent, which I myself took to your father, your Lordship 
was christened at St. Gudule by the same curd who married your 
parents, and by the name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, 
oflicier Anglois, and Gertrude Maes. You see you belong to us 
from your birth, and why I did not christen you when you became 
my dear little pupil at Castlewood. 

“Your father’s wound took a favourable turn — perhaps his 
conscience was eased by tlie right he had doue — and to the suri)rise 
of the doctors he recovered. But as his health came back. Ids wicked 
nature, too, returned. He was tired of the poor girl whom he had 
ruined; and receiving some remittance from his uncle, my Lord the 
old Viscount, then in England, he pretended business, promised 
return, and never saw your poor mother more. 

“ He owned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk 
before your aunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what 
I now tell you, that on coming to London he writ a pretended con- 
fession to poor Gertrude Maes — Gertrude Esmond — of his having 
been married in England previously, before uniting himself witii 
her; said that his name was not Thomas; that he was about to 
quit Europe for the Virginian plantations, where, indeed, your family 


251 


MY EARLY HISTORY 

had a grant of land from King Charles the First ; sent her a supply 
of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, entreated her 
pardon, and bade her farewell. 

“ Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might 
be untrue as the rest of your father’s conduct to her. But though 
a young man of her own degree, who knew her history, and whom 
she liked before she saw the English gentleman who was the cause 
of all her misery, offered to marry her, and to adopt you as his own 
child, and give you his name, she refused him. This refusal only 
angered her father, who had taken her home ; she never held nj) 
her head there, being the subject of constant unkindness after her 
fall ; and some devout ladies of her acquaintance offering to pay 
a little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put 
out to nurse. 

“ A sister of the young fellow who would have adopted you as 
his son was the person who took charge of you. Your mother and 
this person w^ere cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, 
which you replaced, your own mother being too sick and feeble to 
feed you ; and presently your nurse grew so fond of you, that she 
even grudged letting you visit the convent w’here your mother was, 
and where the nuns petted the little infant, as they pitied and loved 
its unhapj)y parent. Her vocation became stronger every day, and 
at the end of two years she was received as a sister of the house. 

“ Your nurse’s family were silk-weavers out of France, whither 
they returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your 
mother took her vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three 
years old. ’Twas a town, before the late vigorous measures of the 
French King, full of Protestants, and here your nurse’s father, old 
Pastoureau, he with whom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted 
the reformed doctrines, perverting all his house with him. They 
were expelled thence by the edict of his Most Christian Majesty, 
and came to London, and set up their looms in Spittlefields. The 
old man brought a little money with him, and carried on his trade, 
but in a poor way. He was a widower ; by this time his daughter, 
a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he laboured 
together at their vocation. Meanwhile your father had publicly 
owned his conversion just before King Charles’s death (in wdiom our 
Church had much such another convert), was reconciled to my Lord 
Viscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter. 

“ It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of 
brocade to the mercer who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his 
old rival coming out of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your 
father at on(;e, seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a 
villain, who had seduced his mistress, and afterwards deserted her 


252 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


and her son. Mr. Thomas Esmond also recognised Pastourean at 
once, besought him to calm his indignation, and not to bring a crowd 
round about them ; and bade him to enter into the tavern, out of 
wliich he had just stepped, when he would give him any explanation. 
Pastoureau entered, and heard the landlord order the drawer to show 
Captain Thomas to a room ; it was by his Christian name that your 
father was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say the 
truth, were none of the most reputable. 

“ I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my Lord Viscount 
afterwards, was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman 
or a dun with a volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, 
of which many a creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used 
to gather verisimilitude as he went on with them. He strung 
together fact after fact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence. It 
required, saving your presence, a very long habit of acquaintance 

with your father to know when his Lordship was 1 , — telling 

the truth or no. 

“ He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill — for the fear 
of death set him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter 
when he was well, his Lordship having a very great sense of humour 
— how in half-an-hour’s time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had 
completely succeeded in biting poor Pastoureau. The seduction he 
owned to : that he could not help : he was quite ready with tears 
at a moment’s warning, and shed them profusely to melt his credulous 
listener. He wept for your mother even more than Pastoureau did, 
who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my Lord informed me ; he 
swore upon his honour that he had twice sent money to Brussels, 
and mentioned the name of the merchant with whom it was lying 
for poor Gertrude’s use. He did not even know whether she had a 
child or no, or whether she was alive or dead ; but got these facts 
easily out of honest Pastoureau’s answers to him. When he heard 
that she was in a convent, he said he hoped to end his days in one 
himself, should he survive his wife, whom he hated, and had been 
forced by a cruel father to marry; and when he was told that 
Gertrude’s son was alive, and actually in London, ‘ I started,’ says 
lie ; • for then, damme, my wife was expecting to lie-in, and I 
thought should this old Put, my father-in-law, run rusty, here 
would be a good chance to frighten him.’ 

“He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family 
for the care of the infant ; you were now near six years old ; and on 
Pastoureau bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant 
and see the darling child, that they never wished to see his ill- 
omened face again within their doors ; that he might have the boy, 
though they should all be very sorry to lose him ; and that they 


MY EARLY HISTORY 


253 


would take his money, they being poor, if he gave it ; or bring iiini 
up, by God’s help, as they had hitherto done, without : he acquiesced 
in this at once, with a sigh, said, ‘ Well, ’twas better that the dear 
child should remain with friends who had been so admirably kind 
to him ; ’ and in liis talk to me afterwards, honestly praised and 
admired the weaver’s conduct and spirit ; owned that the Frenchman 
was a right fellow, and he, the Lord have mercy upon him, a sad 
villain. 

“ Your father,” Mr. Holt went on to say, “ was good-natured 
with his money when he had it ; and having that day received a 
supply from his uncle, gave the weaver ten pieces with perfect free- 
dom, and promised him further remittances. He took down eagerly 
Pastoureau’s name and place of abode in his table-book, and when 
the other asked him for his own, gave, with the utmost readiness, 
his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance, Cornwall ; he 
said he was in London for a few days only on business connected 
with his wife’s property ; described her as a shrew, though a woman 
of kind disposition ; and depicted his father as a Cornish squire, in 
an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something 
handsome, when he promised richly to reward the admirable pro- 
tector of his child, and to provide for the boy. ‘ And by Gad, sir,’ 
he said to me in his strange laughing way, ‘ I ordered a piece of 
brocade of the very same pattern as that which the fellow was 
carrying, and presented it to my wife for a morning wrapper, to 
receive company after she lay-in of our little boy.’ 

“ Your little pension was paid regularly enough ; and when your 
father became Viscount Castlewood on his uncle’s demise, I was 
employed to keep a watch over you, and ’twas at my instance that 
you were brought home. Your foster-mother was dead ; her father 
made acquaintance with a woman whom he married, who quarrelled 
with his son. The faithful creature came back to Brussels to be 
near the woman he loved, and died, too, a few months before her. 
Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery ? The Superior is 
an old penitent of mine, and remembers Soeur Marie Madeleine 
fondly still.” 

Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and 
saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across 
the grassy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother’s 
resting-place. Many more of those poor creatures that lay there 
had adopted that same name, with which sorrow had rebaptized her, 
and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and 
grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of 
her cross, under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt 


254 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in 
awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pity 
for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. 
To this cross she brought them ; for this heavenly bridegroom she 
exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had 
left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle 
daisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing its 
cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard 
by, at a sleeping sister’s bedside (so fresh made, that the spring 
had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it) ; beyond the cemetery 
walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and 
gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit 
first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away 
j)reseiitly with a leaf in its mouth : then came a sound as of chanting, 
from the chapel of the sisters hard by ; others had long since filled 
the place which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling 
at the same stall, and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which 
her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace 
— might she sleep in peace ; and we, too, when our struggles and 
pains are over ! But the earth is the Lord’s as the heaven is ; we 
are alike His creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off 
the hillock and kissed it, and went my way, like the bird that had 
just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent 
receptacle of death ; tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest 
and trouble ! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, 
and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks. 


CHAPTER XIV 

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1707 , 1708 

D uring the whole of the year which succeeded that in which 
the glorious battle of Ramillies had been fought, our army 
made no movement of importance, much to the disgust of 
very many of our officers remaining inactive in Flanders, who said that 
his Grace the Captain-General had had fighting enough, and was 
all for money now, and the enjoyment of Ins five thousand a year 
and his splendid palace at Woodstock, which was now being built. 
And his Grace had sufficient occupation fighting his enemies at 
home this year, where it began to be whispered that liis favour was 
decreasing, and his Duchess losing her hold on the Queen, who was 
transferring her royal affections to the famous Mrs. Masham, and 
Mrs. Masham’s humble servant, Mr. Harley. Against their in- 
trigues, our Duke passed a great part of his time intriguing. Mr. 
Harley was got out of office, and his Grace, in so far, had a victory. 
But her. Majesty, convinced against her will, was of that opinion 
still, of which the poet says people are when so convinced, and Mr. 
Harley before long had his revenge. 

Meanwhile the business of fighting did not go on any way to 
the satisfaction of Marlborough’s gallant lieutenants. During all 
1707, "with the French before us, we had never so much as a battle ; 
our army in Spain was utterly routed at Almanza by the gallant 
Duke of Berwick ; and we of Webb’s, which regiment the young 
Duke had commanded before his father’s abdication, were a little 
proud to think that it was our colonel who had achieved this victory. 
“ I think if I had had Galw’^ay’s place, and my Fusileers,” says our 
General, “ we would not have laid down our arms, even to our old 
colonel, as Galway did ; ” and Webb’s officers swore if we had had 
Webb, at least we would not have been taken prisoners. Our dear 
old General talked incautiously of himself and of others ; a braver 
or a more brilliant soldier never lived than he ; but he blew his 
honest trumpet rather more loudly than became a commander of 
his station, and, mighty man of valour as he was, shook his great 
spear and blustered before the army too fiercely. 

Mysterious Mr. Holtz went otf on a secret expedition in the 


256 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

early part of 1708, with great elation of spirits and a prophecy to 
Esmond that a wonderfid sometliing was about to take j)lace. 
This secret came out on my friend’s return to the army, whither he 
brought a most rueful and dejected countenance, and owned that 
the great something he had been engaged upon had failed utterly. 
He had been indeed with that luckless expedition of the Chevalier 
de St. George, who was sent by the French King with ships and 
an army from Dunkirk, and was to have invaded and conquered 
Scotland. But that ill wind which ever opposed all the projects 
upon which the Prince ever embarked, prevented the Chevalier’s 
invasion of Scotland, as ’tis known, and blew poor Monsieur von 
Holtz back into our camp again, to scheme and foretell, and to pry 
about as usual. The Chevalier (the King of England, as some of 
us held him) went from Dunkirk to the French army to make the 
campaign against us. The Duke of Burgundy had the command 
this year, having the Duke of Berry with him, and the famous 
Mareschal Vendosme and the Duke of Matignon to aid him in 
the campaign. Holtz, who knew everything that was passing in 
Flanders and France (and the Indies for what I know), insisted 
that there would be no more fighting in 1708 than there had been 
in the previous year, and that our commander had reasons for keep- 
ing him quiet. Indeed, Esmond’s General, who was known as a ' 
grumbler, and to have a hearty mistrust of the great Duke, and 
hundreds more ofiicers besides, did not scruple to say that these 
private reasons came to the Duke in the shape of crown-pieces from 
the French King, by whom the Generalissimo was bribed to avoid ^ 
a battle. There were plenty of men in our lines, quidnuncs, to < 
whom Mr. Webb listened only too willingly, who could specify the j 
exact sums the Duke got, how much fell to Cadogan’s share, and | 
what was the precise fee given to Doctor Hare. 

And the successes with which the French began the campaign j 
of 1708 served to give strength to these reports of treason, which j 
were in everybody’s mouth. Our General allowed tlie enemy to 
get between us and Ghent, and declined to attack him though for ] 
eight-and-forty hours the armies were in presence of each other. • 
Ghent was taken, and on the same day Monsieur de la Mothe 
summoned Bruges ; and these two great cities fell into the hands 
of the French without firing a shot. A few days afterwards La 
Mothe seized upon the fort of Plashendall : and it began to be 
supposed that all Spanish Flanders, as well as Brabant, would fall 
into the hands of the French troops ; when the Prince Eugene 
arrived from the Mozelle, and then there was no more shilly- 
shallying. 

The Prince of Savoy always signalised his arrival at the army 


CASTLEWOOD IS HIT 


257 


by a great feast (my Lord Duke’s entertainments were both seldom 
and shabby) ; and I remember our General returning from this 
dinner with the two Commanders-in-Chief ; his honest head a little 
exciteil by wine, which was dealt out much more liberally by the 
Austrian than by the English commander: — “Now,” says my 
General, slapping the table, with an oath, “ he must fight ; and 

when he is forced to it, d it, no man in Europe can stand up 

against Jack Churchill.” Within a week the battle of Oudenarde 
was fought, when, hate each other as they might, Esmond’s General 
and the Commander-in-Chief were forced to admire each other, so 
splendid was the gallantry of each upon this day. 

The brigade commanded by Major-General Webb gave and 
received about as hard knocks as any that were delivered in that 
action, in which Mr. Esmond had the fortune to serve at the head 
of his own company in his regiment, under the command of their 
own Colonel as Major-General ; and it was his good luck to bring 
the regiment out of action as commander of it, the four senior officers 
above him being killed in the prodigious slaughter which happened 
on that day. I like to think that Jack Hay thorn, who sneered at 
me for being a bastard and a parasite of Webb’s, as he chose to call 
me, and with whom I had had words, shook hands with me the' 
day before the battle begun. Three days before, poor Brace, our 
Lieutenant-Colonel, had heard of his elder brother’s death, and was 
heir to a baronetcy in Norfolk, and four thousand a year. Fate, 
that had left him harmless through a dozen campaigns, seized on 
him just as the world was worth living for, and he went into action 
knowing, as he said, that the luck was going to turn against him. 
The Major had just joined us — a creature of Lord Marlborough, put 
in much to the dislike of the other officers, and to be a spy upon us, 
as it was said. I know not whether the truth was so, nor who 
took the tattle of our mess to headquarters, but Webb’s regiment, 
as its Colonel, was known to be in the Commander-in-Chief’s black 
books : “ And if he did not dare to break it up at home,” our 
gallant old chief used to say, “he was determined to destroy it 
before the enemy ; ” so that poor Major Proudfoot was put into a 
post of danger. 

Esmond’s dear young Viscount, serving as aide-de-camp to my 
Lord Duke, received a wound, and won an honourable name for him- 
self in the Gazette ; and Captain Esmond’s name was sent in for 
promotion by his General, too, whose favourite he was. It made 
his heart beat to think that certain eyes at home, the brightest in 
the world, might read the page on which his humble services were 
recorded ; but his mind was made up steadily to keei) out of their 
dangerous influence, and to let time and absence conquer that 
7 H 


258 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


passion lie had still lurking about him. Away from Beatrix, it did 
not trouble him ; but he knew as certain that if he returned home, 
his fever would break out again, and avoided Walcote as a Lincoln- 
shire man avoids returning to his fens, where he is sure that the 
ague is lying in wait for him. i 

We of the English party in the army, who were inclined to j 
sneer at everything that came out of Hanover, and to treat as little 
better than boors and savages the Elector’s Court and family, were 
yet forced to confess that, on the day of Oudenarde, the young 
Electoral Prince, then making his first campaign, conducted himself 
with the spirit and courage of an approved soldier. On this occa- 
sion his Electoral Highness had better luck than the King of 
England, who was with his cousins in the enemy’s camp, and had 
to run with them at the ignominious end of the day. With the 
most consummate generals in the world before them, and an admir- 
able commander on their own side, they chose to neglect the 
counsels, and to rush into a combat with the former, which would 
have ended in the utter annihilation of their army but for the 
great skill and bravery of the Duke of Vendosme, who remedied, as 
far as courage and genius might, the disasters occasioned by the 
squabbles and follies of his kinsmen, the legitimate princes of the 
blood royal. 

“ If the Duke of Berwick had but been in the army, the fate 
of the day would have been very different,” was all that poor 
Mr. von Holtz could say ; “and you would have seen that the hero 
of Almanza was fit to measure swords with the conqueror of 
Blenheim.” 

The business relative to the exchange of prisoners was alwaj^s 
going on, and was at least that ostensible one which kept Mr. 
Holtz perpetually on the move between the forces of the French 
and the Allies. I can answer for it, that he was once very near 
hanged as a spy by Major-General Wayne, when he was released 
and sent on to headquarters by a special order of the Commander- 
in-chief. He came and went, always favoured, wherever he was, 
by some high though occult protection. He carried messages 
between the Duke of Berwick and his uncle, our Duke. He 
seemed to know as well what was taking jdace in the Prince’s 
quarter as our own : he brought the compliments of the King of 
England to some of oirr officers, the gentlemen of Webb’s among the 
rest, for their behaviour on that great day ; and after Wynendael, 
when our General was chafing at the neglect of our Commander-in 
Chief, he said he knew how that action was regarded by the chiefs 
of the French army, and that the stand made before Wynendael 
wood was the passage by wliicli the Allies entered Lille. 


PRINCE EUGENE 259 

All ! ” says Holtz (and some folks were very willing to listen 
to hini), “ if the King came by liis own, how changed the conduct 
of affairs would be ! His Majesty’s very exile has this advantage, 
that he is enabled to read England impartially, and to judge 
honestly of all the eminent men. His sister is always in the hand 
of one greedy favourite or another, through whose eyes she sees, 
and to whose ffattery or dependants she gives away everything. 
Do you suppose that his Majesty, knowing England so well as he 
does, would neglect such a man as General Webb? He ought to 
be in the House of Peers as Lord Lydiard. The enemy and all 
Europe know his merit ; it is that very reputation which certain 
great people, who hate all equality and independence, can never 
pardon.” It was intended that these conversations should be carried 
to Mr. Webb. They were welcome to him, for great as his services 
were, no man could value them more than John Richmond Webb 
did himself, and the differences between him and Marlborough being 
notorious, his Grace’s enemies in the army and at home began to 
court Webb, and set him up against the all-grasping, domineering 
chief. And soon after the victory of Oudenarde, a glorious oppor- 
tunity fell into General Webb’s way, which that gallant warrior did 
not neglect, and which gave him the means of immensely increasing 
his reputation at home. 

After Oudenarde, and against the counsels of Marlborough, it 
was said, the Prince of Savoy sat down before Lille, the capital of 
French Flanders, and commenced that siege, the most celebrated 
of our time, and almost as famous as the siege of Troy itself for the 
feats of valour performed in the assault and the defence. The 
enmity of the Prince of Savoy against the French King was a 
furious personal hate, quite unlike the calm hostility of our great 
English General, who was no more moved by the game of war than 
that of billiards, and pushed forward his squadrons, and drove his 
red battalions hither and thither, as calmly as he would combine a 
stroke or make a cannon with the balls. The game over (and he 
played it so as to be pretty sure to win it), not the least animosity 
against the other party remained in the breast of this consummate 
tactician. Whereas between the Prince of Savoy and the French 
it was guerre a mart. Beaten off in one quarter, as he had been 
in Toulon in the last year, he was back again on another frontier 
of France, assailing it with his indefatigable fury. When the 
Prince came to the army, the smouldering fires of war were lighted 
up and burst out into a ffame. Our phlegmatic Dutch allies were 
made to advance at a quick march — our calm Duke forced into 
action. The Prince was an army in himself against the French ; 
the energy of his hatred, prodigious, indefatigable — infectious over 


260 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

hundreds of thousands of men. The Emperor’s General was repay- 
ing, and with a vengeance, the slight the French King had put upon 
tlie fiery little Abbe of Savoy. Brilliant and famous as a leader 
himself, and beyond all measure daring and intrepid, and enabled 
to cope with almost the best of those famous men of war who com- 
manded the armies of the French King, Eugene had a weapon, the 
equal of which could not be found in France since the cannon-shot 
of Sasbach laid low the noble Turenne, and could hurl Marlborough 
at the heads of the French host, and crush them as with a rock, 
under which all the gathered strength of their strongest captains 
must go down. 

The English Duke took little part in that vast siege of Lille, 
which the Imperial Generalissimo pursued witli all his force and 
vigour, further than to cover the besieging lines from the Duke of 
Burgundy’s army, between which and the Imperialists our Duke 
lay. Once, when Prince Eugene was wounded, our Duke took his 
Highness’s place in the trenches; but the siege was witli the 
Imperialists, not with us. A division under Webb and Rantzau 
was detached into Artois and Picardy upon the most painful and 
odious service that Mr. Esmond ever saw in the course of his 
military life. The wretched towns of the defenceless provinces, 
whose young men had been drafted away into the French armies, 
wliich year after year the insatiable war devoured, were left at our 
mercy ; and our orders were to show them none. We found places 
garrisoned by invalids, and children and women ; poor as they were, 
and as the costs of this miserable war had made them, our com- 
mission was to rob these almost starving wretches— to tear the food 
out of their granaries, and strip them of their rags. ’Twas an ex- 
pedition of rapine and murder we were sent on : our soldiers did 
deeds such as an honest man must blush to remember. We brought 
back money and provisions in quantity to the Duke’s camp ; there 
had been no one to resist us, and yet who dares to tell with what 
murder and violence, with what brutal cruelty, outrage, insult, tliat 
ignoble booty liad been ravished from the innocent and miserable 
victims of the war 1 

Meanwhile, gallantly as tlie operations before Lille had been 
conducted, the Allies had made but little progress, and ’twas said 
when we returned to the Duke of Marlborough’s camp, that the 
siege would never be brought to a satisfactory end, and that the 
Prince of Savoy would be forced to raise it. My Lord Marlborough 
gave this as his opinion openly ; those who mistrusted him, and Mr. 
Esmond owns himself to be of the number, hinted that the Duke had 
his reasons why Lille should not be taken, and that lie was paid to 
that end by the French King. If this was so, and I believe it,, 


WAS HE A TRAITOR? 


26 T 


General Webb had now a remarkable opportunity of gratifying his 
hatred of the Commander-in-chief, of balking that shameful avarice, 
which was one of the basest and most notorious qualities of the 
famous Duke, and of showing his own consummate skill as a com- 
mander. And when I consider all the circumstances preceding the 
event which will noAv be related, that my Lord Duke was actually 
offered certain millions of crowns provided that the siege of Lille 
should be raised ; that the Imperial army before it was without 
provisions and ammunition, and must have decamped but for the 
supplies that they received ; that the march of the convoy destined 
to relieve the siege was accurately known to the French ; and that 
the force covering it was shamefully inadequate to^ that end, and by 
six times inferior to Count de la Mothe’s army, which was sent to 
intercept the convoy ; when ’tis certain that the Duke of Berwick, 
De la Mothe’s chief, was in constant correspondence with his uncle, 
the English Generalissimo : I believe on my conscience that ’twas 
my Lord Marlborough’s intention to prevent those supplies, of which 
the Prince of Savoy stood in absolute need, from ever reaching his 
Highness ; that he meant to sacrifice the little army which covered 
this convoy, and to betray it as he had betrayed Tollemache at 
Brest ; as he had betrayed every friend he had, to further his own 
schemes of avarice or ambition. But for the miraculous victory 
which Esmond’s General won over an army six or seven times greater 
than his own, the siege of Lille must have been raised ; and it must 
be remembered that our gallant little force was under the command 
of a general whom Marlborough hated, that he was furious with the 
conqueror, and tried afterwards by the most open and shameless 
injustice to rob him of the credit of his victory. 


CHAPTER XV 

GENERAL WEBB WINS THE BATTLE OF WYNENDAEL 

B y the besiegers and besieged of Lille, some of the most brilliant 
feats of valour were performed that ever illustrated any war. 
On the French side (whose gallantry was prodigious, the skill 
and bravery of Marshal Boufllers actually eclipsing those of his 
conqueror, the Prince of Savoy) may be mentioned that daring 
action of Messieurs de Luxembourg and Tournefort, who, -with a 
body of horse and dragoons, carried powder into the town, of which 
the besieged were in extreme want, each soldier bringing a bag with 
forty pounds of powder behind him ; with w^hich perilous provision 
they engaged our own horse, faced the fire of the foot brought out 
to meet them : and though half of the men were blown up in the 
dreadful errand they rode on, a part of them got into the town with 
the succours of which the garrison was so much in want. A French 
officer, Monsieur du Bois, performed an act equally daring, and per- 
fectly successful. The Duke’s great army lying at Helchin, and 
covering the siege, and it being necessary for M. de Vendosme to 
get news of the condition of the place. Captain du Bois performed 
his famous exploit : not only passing through the lines of the siege, 
but swimming afterwards no less than seven moats and ditches : 
and coming back the same way, swimming with his letters in his 
mouth. 

By these letters Monsieur de Boufflers said that he could under- 
take to hold the place till October ; and that if one of the con- 
voys of the Allies could be intercepted, they must raise the siege 
altogether. 

Such a convoy as hath been said was now prepared at Ostend, 
and about to march for the siege; and on the 27th September we 
(and the French too) had news that it was on its way. It was 
composed of 700 waggons, containing ammunition of all sorts, and 
was escorted out of Ostend by 2000 infantry and 300 horse. At 
the same time M. de la Mothe quitted Bruges, having with him 
five-and-thirty battalions, and upwards of sixty squadrons and forty 
guns, in pursuit of the convoy. 

Major-General Webb had meanwhile made up a force of twenty 


WYNENDAEL 


263 


battalions and three squadrons of dragoons at Turout, whence he 
moved to cover the convoy and pursue La Mothe : with whose 
advanced guard ours came up upon the great plain of Turout, and 
before the little wood and castle of Wynendael; behind which the 
convoy was marching. 

As soon as they came in sight of the enemy, our advanced 
troops were halted, with the wood behind them, and the rest of 
our force brought up as quickly as possible, our little body of horse 
being brought forward to the opening of the plain, as our General 
said, to amuse the enemy. When M. de la Mothe came up, he 
found us posted in two lines in front of the wood ; and formed his 
own army in battle facing ours, in eight lines, four of infantry in 
front, and dragoons and cavalry behind. 

The French began the action, as usual, with a cannonade which 
lasted three hours, when they made their attack, advancing in eight 
lines, four of foot and four of horse, upon the allied troops in the 
wood where we were posted. Their infantry behaved ill : they 
were ordered to charge with the bayonet, but, instead, began to 
fire, and almost at the very first discharge from our men, broke 
and fled. The cavalry behaved better; with these alone, who 
were three or four times as numerous as our whole force. Monsieur 
de la Mothe might have won victory : but only two of our battalions 
were shaken in the least ; and these speedily rallied : nor could the 
repeated attacks of the French horse cause our troops to budge 
an inch from the position in the wood in which our General had 
placed them. 

After attacking for two hours, the French retired at nightfall 
entirely foiled. With all the loss we had inflicted upon him, the 
enemy was still three times stronger than we ; and it could not be 
supposed that our General could pursue M. de la Mothe, or do 
much more than hold our ground about the wood, from which the 
Frenchmen had in vain attempted to dislodge us. La Mothe 
retired behind his forty guns, his cavalry protecting them better 
than it had been able to annoy us ; and meanwhile the convoy, 
which was of more importance than all our little force, and the safe 
passage of which we would have dropped to the last man to accom- 
plish, marched away in perfect safety during the action, and joyfully 
reached the besieging camp before Lille. 

Major-General Cadogan, my Lord Duke’s Quartermaster-General 
(and between whom and Mr. Webb there was no love lost), accom- 
panied the convoy, and joined Mr. AVebb with a couple of hundred 
horse just as the battle was over, and the enemy in full retreat. 
He offered, readily enough, to charge with his horse upon the 
French as they fell back ; but his force was too weak to inflict any 


26*4 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

damage upon them; and Mr. Webb, commanding as Cadogan’s 
senior, thought enough was done in holding our ground before an 
enemy that might still have overwhelmed us had we engaged him 
in the open territory, and in securing the safe passage of the convoy. 
Accordingly, the horse brought up by Cadogan did not draw a 
sword ; and only prevented, by the good countenance they showed, 
any disposition the French might have had to renew the attack on 
us. And no attack coming, at nightfall General Cadogan drew off 
with his squadron, being bound for headquarters, the two Generals 
at parting grimly saluting each other. 

“ He will be at Roncq time enough to lick my Lord Duke’s 
trenchers at supper,” says Mr. Webb. 

Our own men lay out in the woods of Wynendael that night, 
and our General had his supper in the little castle there. 

“If I was Cadogan, I would have a peerage for this day’s 
work,” General Webb said; “and, Harry, thou shouldst have a 
regiment. Thou hast been reported in the last two actions ; thou 
wert near killed in the first. I shall mention thee in my despatch 
to his Grace the Commander-in-Chief, and recommend thee to poor 
Dick Harwood’s vacant majority. Have you ever a hundred 
guineas to give CardonneU Slip them into his hand to-morrow, 
when you go to headquarters with my report.” 

In this report the Major-General was good enough to mention 
Captain Esmond’s name with particular favour; and that gentle- 
man carried the despatch to headquarters the next day, and was 
not a little pleased to bring back a letter by his Grace’s secretary, 
addressed to Lieutenant-General Webb. The Dutch officer de- 
spatched by Count Nassau Woudenbourg, Vselt-Mareschal Auver- 
querque’s son, brought back also a complimentary letter to his 
commander, who had seconded Mr. Webb in the action with great 
valour and skill. 

Esmond, with a low bow and a smiling face, presented his 
despatch, and saluted Mr. Webb as Lieutenant-General, as he 
gave it in. The gentlemen round about him — he was riding with 
his suite on the road to Menin as Esmond came up with him — gave 
a cheer, and he thanked them, and opened the despatch with 
rather a flushed, eager face. 

He slapped it down on his boot in a rage after he had read it. 
“’Tis not even writ with his own hand. Read it out, Esmond.” 
And Esmond read it out : — 

“ Sir, — Mr. Cadogan is just now come in, and has acquainted 
me with the success of the action you had yesterday in the after- 
noon against the body of troops commanded by M. de la Mothe, at 


WE DINE WITH PRINCE EUGENE 265 

Wynendael, which must be attributed chiefly to your good conduct 
and resolution. You may be sure I shall do you justice at home, 
and be glad on all occasions to own the service you have done in 
securing this convoy. — Yours, &c., M.” 

“ Two lines by that d d Cardonnel, and no more, for the 

taking of Lille — for beating five times our number — for an action 
as brilliant as the best he ever fought,” says poor Mr. Webb. 
“ Lieutenant-General ! That’s not his doing. I was the oldest 

major-general. By , I believe he had been better pleased if 

I had been beat.” 

The letter to the Dutch ofiicer was in French, and longer and 
more complimentary than that to Mr. Webb. 

“And this is the man,” he broke out, “that’s gorged with gold 
— that’s covered with titles and honours that we won for him — and 
that grudges even a line of praise to a comrade in arms ! Hasn’t he 
enough 1 Don’t we fight that he may roll in riches'? Well, well, 
wait for the Gazette, gentlemen. The Queen and the country will 
do us justice if his Grace denies it us.” There were tears of rage 
in the brave warrior’s eyes as he spoke ; and he dashed them off 
his face on to his glove. He shook his fist in the air. “ Oh, by 
the Lord ! ” says he, “ I know what I had rather have than a 
peerage ! ” 

“ And what is that, sir % ” some of them asked. 

“ I had rather have a quarter of an hour with John Churchill, 
on a fair green field, and only a pair of rapiers between my shirt 
and his 

“ Sir ! ” interposes one. 

“ Tell him so ! I know that’s what you mean. I know every 
word goes to him that’s dropped from every general officer’s mouth. 
I don’t say he’s not brave. Curse him ! he’s brave enough ; but 
we’ll wait for the Gazette, gentlemen. God save her Majesty ! 
she’ll do us justice.” 

The Gazette did not come to us till a month afterwards ; when 
my General and his officers had the honour to dine with Prince 
Eugene in Lille ; his Highness being good enough to say that we 
had brought the provisions, and ought to share in the banquet. 
’Twas a great banquet. His Grace of Marlborough was on his 
Highness’s right, and on his left the Mareschal de Bouffiers, who 
had so bravely defended the place. The chief officers of either army 
were present ; and you may be sure Esmond’s General was splendid 
this day : his tall noble person, and manly beauty of face, made 
him remarkable anywhere ; he wore, for the first time, the star 
of the Order of Generosity, that his Prussian Majesty had sent 


266 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

to him for his victory. His Highness the Prince of Savoy called 
a toast to the conqueror of Wynendael. My Lord Duke drank 
it with rather a sickly smile. The aides-de-camp were present ; 
and Harry Esmond and his dear young lord were together, as they 
always strove to be when duty would permit : they were over 
against the table where the generals were, and could see all that 
passed pretty well. Frank laughed at my Lord Duke’s glum face : 
the affair of Wynendael, and the Captain-Gfeneral’s conduct to Webb, 
had been the talk of the whole army. When his Highness spoke, 
and gave, “ Le vainqueur de Wynendael ; son arm^e et sa victoire,” 
adding, “qui nous font diner k Lille aujourd’huy” — there was a 
great cheer through the hall ; for Mr. Webb’s bravery, generosity, and 
very weaknesses of character caused him to be beloved in the army. 

“ Like Hector, handsome, and like Paris, brave ! ” whispers 
Frank Castle wood. “A Venus, an elderly Venus, couldn’t refuse 
him a pippin. Stand up, Harry ! See, we are drinking the army 
of Wynendael. Ramillies is nothing to it. Huzzay ! huzzay ! ” 

At this very time, and just after our General had made his 
acknowledgment, some one brought in an English Gazette — and was 
passing it from hand to hand down the table. Officers were eager 
enough to read it ; mothers and sisters at home must have sickened 
over it. There scarce came out a Gazette for six years that did not 
tell of some heroic death or some brilliant achievement. 

“ Here it is — Action of Wynendael — here you are. General,” says 
Frank, seizing hold of the little dingy paper that soldiers love to 
read so ; and, scrambling over from our bench, he went to where 
the General sat, who knew him, and had seen many a time at his 
table his laughing, handsome face, which everybody loved who saw. 
The Generals in their great perukes made way for him. He handed 
the paper over General Dohna’s buff-coat to our General on the 
opposite side. 

He came hobbling back, and blushing at his feat : “I thought 
he’d like it, Harry,” the young fellow whispered. “ Didn’t I like 
to read my name after Ramillies, in the London Gazette — Viscount, 

Oastlewood serving a volunteer I say, what’s yonder % ” 

Mr. Webb, reading the Gazette, looked very strange — slapped 
it down on the table — then sprang up in his place, and began, 

“ Will your Highness please to ” 

His Grace the Duke of Marlborough here jumped up too — 
“ There’s some mistake, my dear General Webb.” 

“Your Grace had better rectify it,” says Mr. Webb, holding 
out the letter ; but he was five off his Grace the Prince Duke, who, 
besides, was higher than the General (being seated with the Prince 
of Savoy, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and the envoys of Prussia 


THE “GAZETTE” NOT TRUTHFUL 267 

and Denmark, under a baldaquin), and Webb could not reach him, 
tall as he was. 

“ Stay,” says he, with a smile, as if catching at some idea, and 
then, with a perfect courtesy, drawing his sword, he ran the Gazette 
through with the point, and said, “ Permit me to hand it to 
your Grace. 

The Duke looked very black. “ Take it,” says he, to his Master 
of the Horse, who was waiting behind him. 

The Lieutenant-General made a very low bow, and retired and 
finished his glass. The Gazette in which Mr. Cardonnel, the Duke’s 
secretary, gave an account of the victory of Wynendael, mentioned 
Mr. Webb’s name, but gave the sole praise and conduct of the action 
to the Duke’s favourite, Mr. Cadogan. 

There was no little talk and excitement occasioned by this strange 
behaviour of General Webb, who had almost drawn a sword upon 
the Commander-in-Chief ; but the General, after the first outbreak 
of his anger, mastered it outwardly altogether ; and, by his subse- 
quent behaviour, had the satisfaction of even more angering the 
Commander-in-Chief, than he could have done by any public exhi- 
bition of resentment. 

On returning to his quarters, and consulting with his chief 
adviser, Mr. Esmond, who was now entirely in the General’s confi- 
dence, and treated by him as a friend, and almost a son, Mr. Webb 
writ a letter to his Grace the Commander-in-Chief, in which 
he said : — 

“Your Grace must be aware that the sudden perusal of the 
London Gazette^ in which your Grace’s secretary, Mr. Cardonnel, 
hath mentioned Major-General Cadogan’s name as the officer com- 
manding in the late action of Wynendael, must have caused a feeling 
of anything but pleasure to the General who fought that action. 

“ Your Grace must be aware that Mr. Cadogan was not even 
present at the battle, though he arrived with squadrons of horse at 
its close, and put himself under the command of his superior officer. 
And as the result of the battle of Wynendael, in which Lieutenant- 
General Webb had the good fortune to command, was the capture 
of Lille, the relief of Brussels, then invested by the enemy under 
the Elector of Bavaria, the restoration of the great cities of Ghent 
and Bruges, of which the enemy (by treason within the walls) had 
got possession in the previous year, Mr. Webb cannot consent to 
forego the honours of such a success and service, for the benefit of 
Mr. Cadogan, or any other person. 

“As soon as the military operations of the year are over, 
Lieutenant-General Webb will request permission to leave the 


268 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

army, and return to his place in Parliament, where he gives notice 
to his Grace the Commander-in-Chief, that he shall lay his case 
before the House of Commons, the country, and her Majesty the 
Queen. 

“ By his eagerness to rectify that false statement of the Gazette^ 
wliich had been written by his Grace’s secretary, Mr. Cardonnel, Mr. 
Webb, not being able to reach his Grace the Commander-in-Chief 
on account of the gentlemen seated between them, placed the paper 
containing the false statement on his sword, so that it might more 
readily arrive, in the hands of his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, 
who surely would wish to do justice to every officer of his army. 

“Mr. Webb knows his duty too well to think of insubordination 
to his superior officer, or of using his sword in a campaign against any 
but the enemies of her Majesty. He solicits permission to [return 
to England immediately the military duties will permit, and take 
with him to England Captain Esmond, of his regiment, who acted as 
his aide-de-camp, and was present during the entire action, and noted 
by his watch the time when Mr. Cadogan arrived at its close.” 

The Commander-in-Chief could not but grant his permission, 
nor could he take notice of Webb’s letter, though it was couched in 
terms the most insulting. Half the army believed that the cities 
of Ghent and Bruges were given up by a treason, which some in our 
army very well understood ; that the Commander-in-Chief would not 
have relieved Lille, if he could have helped himself ; that he would 
not have fought that year had not the Prince of Savoy forced him. 
When the battle once began, then, for liis own renown, my Lord 
Marlborough would fight as no man in the world ever fought better ; 
and no bribe on earth could keep him from beating the enemy.* 

* Our grandfather's hatred of the Duke of Mai Thorough appears all through 
his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the Duke was the 
greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of : and declared that he took 
bribes on all hands during the war. My Lord Marquis (for so we may call him 
here, though he never went by any other name than Colonel Esmond) was in 
the habit of telling many stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and 
which he had from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed, 
and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two millions of 
crowns before the campaign of Ramillies. 

And our grandmother used to tell us children, that on his first presentation 
to my Lord Duke, the Duke turned his back upon my grandfather ; and said to 
the Duchess, who told my Lady Dowager at Chelsey, who afterwards told Colonel 
Esmond : “ Tom Esmond’s bastard has been to my levee ; he has the hangdog 
look of his rogue of a father an expression which my grandfather never 
forgave. He was as constant in his dislikes as in his attachments ; and exceed- 
ingly partial to Webb, whose side he took against the more celebrated general. 
We have General Webb’s portrait now at Castlevvood, Va. 


BLOODY MOHUN 269 

But the matter was taken up by the subordinates ; and half 
the army might have been by the ears, if the quarrel had not been 
stopped. General Cadogan sent an intimation to General Webb to 
say that he was ready if Webb liked, and would meet him. This 
was a kind of invitation our stout old General was always too ready 
to accept, and ’twas with great difficulty we got the General to 
reply that he had no quarrel with Mr. Cadogan, who had behaved 
with perfect gallantry, but only with those at headquarters, who 
had belied him. Mr. Cardonnel offered General Webb reparation ; 
Mr. Webb said he had a cane at the service of Mr. Cardonnel, and 
the only satisfaction he wanted from him was one he was not likely 
to get, namely, the truth. The officers in our staff of Webb’s, and 
those in the immediate suite of the General, were ready to come to 
blows ; and hence arose the only affair in which Mr. Esmond ever 
engaged as principal, and that was from a revengeful wish to wipe 
off an old injury. 

My Lord Mohun, who had a troop in Lord Macclesfield’s regi- 
ment of the Horse Guards, rode this campaign with the Duke. He 
had sunk by this time to the very worst reputation ; he had had 
another fatal duel in Spain ; he had married, and forsaken his wife ; 
he was a gambler, a profligate, and debauchee. He joined just 
before Oudenarde ; and, as Esmond feared, as soon as Frank Castle- 
wood heard of his arrival, Frank was for seeking him out, and 
killing him. The wound my Lord got at Oudenarde prevented 
their meeting, but that was nearly healed, and Mr. Esmond trembled 
daily lest any chance should bring his boy and this known assassin 
together. They met at the mess-table of Haiidyside’s regiment at 
Lille ; the officer commanding not knowing of the feud between the 
two noblemen. 

Esmond had not seen the hateful handsome face of Mohun for 
nine years, since they had met on that fatal night in Leicester 
Field. It was degraded with crime and passion now ; it wore the 
anxious look of a man who has three deaths, and who knows how 
many hidden shames, and lusts, and crimes on his conscience. He 
bowed with a sickly low bow, and slunk away when our host pre- 
sented us round to one another. Frank Castlewood had not known 
him till then» so changed was he. He knew the boy well enough. 

’Twas curious to look at the two — especially the young man, 
whose face flushed up when he heard the hated name of the other ; 
and who said in his bad French and his brave boyish voice, “He 
had long been anxious to meet my Lord Mohun.” The other only 
bowed, and moved away from him. To do him justice, he wished 
to have no quarrel with the lad. 

Esmond put himself between them at table. “ D 


it,” says 


270 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Frank, “why do you put yourself in the place of a man who is 
above you in degree 1 My Lord Mohun should walk after me. I 
want to sit by my Lord Mohun.” 

Esmond whispered to Lord Mohun, that Frank was hurt in the 
leg at Oudenarde ; and besought the other to be quiet. Quiet enough 
he was for some time ; disregarding the many taunts which young 
Castlewood flung at him, until after several healths, when my Lord 
Mohun got to be rather in liquor. 

“ Will you go away, my Lord ? ” Mr. Esmond said to him, im- 
ploring him to quit the table. 

“No, by G— ,” says my Lord Mohun. “I’ll not go away for 
any man ; ” he was quite flushed with wine by this time. 

The talk got round to the affairs of yesterday. Webb had 
offered to challenge the Commander-in-Chief ; Webb had been ill- 
used : Webb was the bravest, handsomest, vainest man in the army. 
Lord Mohun did not know that Esmond was Webb’s aide-de-camp. 
He began to tell some stories against the General ; which, from 
t’other side of Esmond, young Castlewood contradicted. 

“ I can’t bear any more of this,” says my Lord Mohun. 

“Nor can I, my Lord,” says Mr. Esmond, starting up. “The 
story my Lord Mohun has told respecting General Webb is false, 
gentlemen — false, I repeat,” and making a low bow to Lord Mohun, 
and without a single word more, Esmond got up and left the dining- 
room. These affairs were common enough among the military of 
those days. There was a garden behind the house, and all the 
party turned instantly into it ; and the two gentlemen’s coats were 
off and their points engaged within two minutes after Esmond’s 
words had been spoken. If Captain Esmond had put Mohun out 
of the world, as he might, a villain would have been punished and 
spared further villainies — but who is one man to punish another 1 
I declare upon my honour that my only thought was to prevent 
Lord Mohun from mischief with Frank, and the end of this meeting 
was, that after half-a-dozen passes my Lord went home with a hurt 
which prevented him from lifting his right arm for three months. 

“0 Harry! why didn’t you kill the villain'?” young Castle- 
wood asked. “ I can’t walk without a crutch : but I could have 
met him on horseback with sword and pistol.” But Harry Esmond 
said, “ ’Twas best to have no man’s life on one’s conscience, not 
even that villain’s.” And this affair, which did not occupy three 
minutes, being over, the gentlemen went back to their wine, and 
my Lord Mohun to his quarters, where he was laid up with a fever 
which had spared mischief had it proved fatal. And very soon 
after this affair Harry Esmond and his General left the camp for 
London; whither a certain reputation had preceded the Captain, 


GENERAL WEBB IS FEASTED 271 

for my Lady Castlewood of Clielsey received him as if he had been 
a conquering hero. She gave a great dinner to Mr. Webb, where 
the General’s chair was crowned with laurels; and her Ladyship 
called Esmond’s health in a toast, to which my kind General was 
graciously pleased to bear the strongest testimony : and took down 
a mob of at least forty coaches to cheer our General as he came out 
of the House of Commons, the day when he received the thanks of 
Parliament for his action. The mob huzza’d and applauded him, 
as well as the fine company : it was splendid to see him waving his 
hat, and bowing, and laying his hand upon his Order of Generosity. 
He introduced Mr. Esmond to Mr. St. John and the Right Honourable 
Robert Harley, Esquire, as he came out of the House walking between 
them ; and was pleased to make many flattering observations re- 
garding Mr. Esmond’s behaviour during the three last campaigns. 

Mr. St. John (who had the most winning presence of any man 
I ever saw, excepting always my peerless young Frank Castlewood) 
said he had heard of Mr. Esmond before from Captain Steele, and 
how he had helped Mr. Addison to write his famous poem of the 
“ Campaign.” 

“ ’Twas as great an achievement as the victory of Blenheim 
itself,” Mr. Harley said, who was famous as a judge and patron of 
letters, and so, perhaps, it may be — though for my part I think 
there are twenty beautiful lines, but all the rest is commonplace, 
and Mr. Addison’s hymn worth a thousand such poems. 

All the town was indignant at my Lord Duke’s unjust treatment 
of General Webb, and applauded the vote of thanks which the 
House of Commons gave to the General for his victory at Wynendael. 
’Tis certain that the capture of Lille was the consequence of that 
lucky achievement, and the humiliation of the old French King, 
who was said to suffer more at the loss of this great city, than 
from any of the former victories our troops had won over him. 
And, I think, no small part of Mr. Webb’s exultation at his victory 
arose from the idea that Marlborough had been disappointed of a 
great bribe the French King had promised him, should the siege be 
raised. The very sum of money offered to him was mentioned by 
the Duke’s enemies ; and honest Mr. Webb chuckled at the notion, 
not only of beating the French, but of beating Marlborough too, 
and intercepting a convoy of three millions of French crowns, that 
were on their way to the Generalissimo’s insatiable pockets. When 
the General’s lady went to the Queen’s drawing-room, all the Tory 
women crowded round her with congratulations, and made her a 
train greater than the Duchess of Marlborough’s own. Feasts were 
given to the General by all the chiefs of the Tory party, who 
vaunted him as the Duke’s equal in military skill; and perhaps 


272 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

used the worthy soldier as their instrument, whilst he thought they 
were but acknowledging his merits as a commander. As the 
General’s aide-de-camp and favourite officer, Mr. Esmond came in 
for a share of his chiefs popularity, and was presented to her 
Majesty, and advanced to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, at the 
request of his grateful chief. 

We may be sure there was one family in which any good fortune 
that happened to Esmond caused such a sincere pride and pleasure, 
that he, for his part, was thankful he could make them so happy. 
With these fond friends Blenheim and Oudenarde seemed to be mere 
trifling incidents of the war; and Wynendael was its crowning 
victory. Esmond’s mistress never tired to hear accounts of the 
battle ; and I think General Webb’s lady grew jealous of her, for 
the General was for ever at Kensington, and talking on that delight- 
ful theme. As for his aide-de-camp, though, no doubt, Esmond’s 
own natural vanity was pleased at the little share of reputation 
which his good fortune had won him, yet it was chiefly precious to 
him (he may say so, now that he hath long since outlived it) because 
it pleased his mistress, and, above all, because Beatrix valued it. 

As for the old Dowager of Chelsey, never was an old woman in 
all England more delighted nor more gracious than she. Esmond 
had his quarters in her Ladyship’s house, where the domestics were 
instructed to consider him as their master. She bade him give 
entertainments, of which she defrayed the charges, and was charmed 
when his guests were carried away tipsy in their coaches. She 
must have his picture taken ; and accordingly he was painted by 
Mr. Jervas, in his red coat, and smiling upon a bombshell, which 
was bursting at the corner of the piece. She vowed that unless he 
made a great match, she should never die easy, and was for ever 
bringing young ladies to Chelsey, with pretty faces and pretty 
fortunes, at the disposal of the Colonel. He smiled to think how 
times were altered with him, and of the early days in his father’s 
lifetime, .when a trembling page he stood before her, with her Lady- 
ship’s basin and ewer, or crouched in her coach-step. The only 
fault she found with him was, that he was more sober than an 
Esmond ought to be ; and would neither be carried to bed by his 
valet, nor lose his heart to any beauty, whether of St. James’s or 
Co vent Garden. 

What is the meaning of fidelity in love, and whence the birth 
of it ? ’Tis a state of mind that men fall into, and depending on 
the man rather than the woman. We love being in love, that’s the 
truth on’t. If we had not met Joan, we should have met Kate, 
and adored her. We know our mistresses are no better than many 
other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no wittier. ’Tis 


273 


WHY DO WE FALL IN LOVE? 

not for these reasons we love a woman, or for any special quality or 
charm I know of ; we miglit as well demand that a lady should be 
the tallest woman in the world, like the Shropshire giantess,* as 
that she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began 
to love her. Esmond’s mistress had a thousand faults beside her 
charms ; he knew both perfectly well ! She was imperious, she 
was light minded, she was flighty, she was false, she had no rever- 
ence in her character ; she was in everything, even in beauty, the 
contrast of her mother, who was the most devoted and the least 
selfish of women. Well, from the very first moment he saw her 
on the stairs at Walcote, Esmond knew he loved Beatrix. There 
might be better women — he wanted that one. He cared for none 
other. Was it because she was gloriously beautiful? Beautiful as 
she was, he had heard people say a score of times in their company 
that Beatrix’s mother looked as young, and w^as the handsomer of 
the two. Why did her voice thrill in his ear so ? She could not 
sing near so well as Nicolini or Mrs. Tofts ; nay, she sang out of 
tune, and yet he liked to hear her better than St. Cecilia. She had 
not a finer complexion than Mrs. Steele (Dick’s wife, whom he had 
now got, and who ruled poor Dick with a rod of pickle), and yet to 
see her dazzled Esmond ; he would shut his eyes, and the thought 
of her dazzled him all the same. She was brilliant and lively in 
talk, but not so incomparably witty as her mother, who, when she 
was cheerful, said the finest things ; but yet to hear her, and to 
be with her, was Esmond’s greatest pleasure. Days passed away 
between him and these ladies, he scarce knew how. He poured his 
heart out to them, so as he never could in any other company, where 
he hath generally passed for being moody, or supercilious and silent. 
This society! was more delightful than that of the greatest wits 
to him. May Heaven pardon him the lies he told the Dowager at 
Chelsey in order to get a pretext for going away to Kensington : 
the business at the Ordnance which he invented ; the interviews 
with his General, the courts and statesmen’s levies which he didn’t 
frequent, and described ; who wore a new suit on Sunday at St. 
James’s or at the Queen’s birthday ; how many coaches filled the 
street at Mr. Harley’s lev^e ; how many bottles he had had the 
honour to drink over-night with Mr. St. John at the “ Cocoa-Tree,” 
or at the “ Garter ” with Mr. Walpole and Mr. Steele. 

Mistress Beatrix Esmond had been a dozen times on the point 
of making great matches, so the Court scandal said ; but for his 

* 'Tis not thus woman loves : Col. E. hath owned to this folly for a score of 
women besides. — R. 

f And, indeed, so was his to them, a thousand thousand times more charm- 
ing, for where was his equal ? — R. 


274 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


part Esmond never would believe the stories against her ; and eame 
back, after three years’ absence from her, not so frantic as he had 
been perhaps, but still hungering after her and no other ; still hope- 
ful, still kneeling, with his heart in his hand for the young lady to i 
take. We were now got to 1709. She was near twenty-two years 
old, and three years at Court, and without a husband. 

“ ’Tis not for want of being asked,” Lady Castlewood said, 
looking into Esmond’s heart, as she could, with that perceptive- 
ness aftection gives. “ But she will make no mean match, Harry ; 
she will not marry as I would have her ; the person whom I should 
like to call my son, and Henry Esmond knows who that is, is best 
served by my not pressing his claim. Beatrix is so wilful, that 
what I would urge on her, she would be sure to resist. The man 
who would marry her will not be happy with her, unless he be a 
great person, and can put her in a great position. Beatrix loves 
admiration more than love ; and longs, beyond all things, for com- 
mand. Why should a mother speak so of her ehild 1 You are my 
son, too, Harry. You should know the truth about your sister. I 
thought you might cure yourself of your passion,” my Lady added 
fondly. “Other people can cure themselves of that folly, you 
know. But I see you are still as infatuated as ever. When we 
read your name in the Gazette, I pleaded for you, my poor boy. 
Poor boy, indeed ! You are growing a grave old gentleman, now, 
and I am an old woman. She likes your fame well enough, and 
she likes your person. She says you have wit, and fire, and good- 
breeding, and are more natural than the fine gentlemen of the 
Court. But this is not enough. She wants a commander-in-chief, 
and not a colonel. Were a duke to ask her, she would leave an 
earl whom she had promised. I told you so before. I know not 
how my poor girl is so worldly.” 

“Well,” says Esmond, “a man can but give his best and his 
all. She has that from me. What little reputation I have won, 

I swear I cared for it because I thought Beatrix would be pleased 
with it. What care I to be a colonel or a general ? Think you 
’twill matter a few score years hence, what our foolish honours 
to-day are ? I would have had a little fame, that she might wear 
it in her hat. If I had anything better, I would endow her with 
it. If she wants my life, I would give it her. If she marries 
another, I will say God bless him. I make no boast, nor no com- 
plaint. I think my fidelity is folly, perhaps. But so it is. I 
cannot help myself. I love her. You are a thousand times better : 
the fondest, the fairest, the dearest of women. Sure, my dear lady, 

I see all Beatrix’s faults as well as you do. But she is my fate. 
’Tis endurable. I shall not die for not having her. I think I 


QUE VOULEZ-VOUS? JE L’AIME 275 

should be no happier if I won her. Qiie voulez-vous 1 as my Lady 
of Chelsey would say. Je Faime.” 

“I wish she would have you,” said Harry’s fond mistress, 
giving a hand to him. He kissed the fair hand (’twas the prettiest 
dimpled little hand in the world, and my Lady Castlewood, though 
now almost forty years old, did not look to be within ten years 
of lier age). He kissed and kept her fair hand as they talked 
together. 

“Why,” says he, “should she hear mel She knows what I 
would say. Far or near, she knows I’m her slave. I have sold 
myself for nothing, it may be. Well, ’tis the jn'ice I choose to 
take. I am worth nothing, or I am worth all.” 

“You are such a treasure,” Esmond’s mistress was pleased to 
say, “that the woman who has your love, shouldn’t change it 
away against a kingdom, I think. I am a country-bred woman, 
and cannot say but the ambitions of the town seem mean to me. 
I never was awe-stricken by my Lady Duchess’s rank and finery, or 
afraid,” she added, with a sly laugh, “ of anything but her temper. 
I hear of Court ladies who pine because her Majesty looks cold on 
them ; and great noblemen who would give a limb that they might 
wear a garter on the other. This worldliness, which I can’t com- 
prehend, was born with Beatrix, who, on the first day of her 
waiting, was a perfect courtier. We are like sisters, and she 
the elder sister, somehow. She tells me I have a mean spirit. 
I laugh, and say she adores a coach-and-six. I cannot reason her 
out of her ambition. ’Tis natural to her, as to me to love quiet, 
and be indifferent about rank and riches. What are they, Harry 'I 
and for how long do they last ? Our home is not here.” She 
smiled as she spoke, and looked like an angel that was only on 
earth on a visit. “ Our home is where the just are, and where our 
sins and sorrows enter not. My father used to rebuke me, and 
say that I was too hopeful about heaven. But I cannot help my 
nature, and grow obstinate as I grow to be an old woman ; and as 
I love my children so, sure our Father loves us with a thousand 
and a thousand times greater love. It must be that we shall meet 
yonder, and be happy. Yes, you — and my children, and my dear 
lord. Do you know, Harry, since his death, it has always seemed 
to me as if his love came back to me, and that we are parted no 
more. Perhaps he is here now, Harry — I think he is. Forgiven I 
am sure he is : even Mr. Atterbury absolved him, and he died 
forgiving. Oh, what a noble heart he had ! How' generous he 
was ! I was but fifteen and a child when he married me. How 
good he was to stoop to me ! He was always good to the poor 
and humble.” She stopped, then presently, with a peculiar expres- 


276 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

sion, as if her eyes were looking into heaven, and saw my Lord 
there, she smiled, and gave a little laugh. “ I laugh to see you, 
sir,” she says ; “ when you come, it seems as if you never were 
away.” One may put her words down, and remember them, but 
how describe her sweet tones, sweeter than music ! 

My young lord did not come home at the end of the campaign, 
and wrote that he was kept at Bruxelles on military duty. Indeed, 
I believe he was engaged in laying siege to a certain lady, who was 
of the suite of Madame de Soissons, the Prince of Savoy’s mother, 
who was just dead, and who, like the Flemish fortresses, was taken 
and retaken a great number of times during the war, and occupied 
by French, English, and Imperialists. Of course, Mr. Esmond did 
not think fit to enlighten Lady Castlewood regarding the young 
scapegrace’s doings ; nor had he said a word about the affair with 
Lord Mohun, knowing how abhorrent that man’s name was to his 
mistress. Frank did not waste much time or money on pen and 
ink ; and, when Harry came home with his General, only writ two 
lines to his mother, to say his wound in the leg was almost healed, 
that he would keep his coming of age next year — that the duty 
aforesaid would keep him at Bruxelles, and that Cousin Harry would 
tell all the news. 

But from Bruxelles, knowing how the Lady Castlewood always 
liked to have a letter about the famous 29th of December, my 
Lord writ her a long and full one, and in this he must have 
described the affair with Mohun ; for when Mr. Esmond came to 
visit his mistress one day, early in the new year, to his great 
wonderment, she and her daughter both came up and saluted him, 
and after them the Dowager of Chelsey, too, whose chairman had 
just brought her Ladyship from her village to Kensington across 
the fields. After this honour, I say, from the two ladies of Castle- 
wood, the Dowager came forward in great state, with her grand 
tall head-dress of King James’s reign, that she never forsook, and 
said, “ Cousin Henry, all our family have met ; and we thank you, 
cousin, for your noble conduct towards the head of our house.” 
And pointing to her blushing cheek, she made Mr. Esmond aware 
that he was to enjoy the rapture of an embrace there. Having 
saluted one cheek, she turned to him the other. “ Cousin Harry,” 
said both the other ladies, in a little chorus, “ we thank you for 
your noble conduct;” and then Harry became aware that the 
story of the Lille affair had come to his kinswomen’s ears. It 
pleased him to hear them all saluting him as one of their family. 

The tables of the dining-room were laid for a great entertain- 
ment ; and the ladies were in gala dresses — my Lady of Chelsey in 
her liighest tour, my Lady Viscountess out of black, and looking fair 


A FEAST AT KENSINGTON 


277 


and happy k ravir ; and the Maid of Honour attired with that splen- 
dour which naturally distinguished her, and wearing on her beautiful 
breast the French officer’s star which Frank had sent home after 
Kamillies. 

“ You see, ’tis a gala day with us,” says she, glancing down to 
the star complacently, “and we have our orders on. Does not 
mamma look charming ? ’Twas I dressed her ! ” Indeed, Esmond’s 
dear mistress, blushing as he looked at her, with her beautiful fair 
hair, and an elegant dress, according to the mode, appeared to have 
the shape and complexion of a girl of twenty. 

On tlie table was a fine sword, with a red velvet scabbard, and 
a beautiful chased silver handle, with a blue riband for a sword- 
knot. “ What is this 1 ” says the Captain, going up to look at this 
pretty piece. 

Mrs. Beatrix advanced towards it. “ Kneel down,” says she : 
“ we dub you our knight with this ” — and she waved the sword over 
his head. “ My Lady Dowager hath given the sword ; and I give 
the riband, and mamma hath sewn on the fringe. 

“ Put the sword on him, Beatrix,” says her mother. “You are 
our knight, Harry^ — our true kniglit. Take a mother’s thanks and 
prayers for defending her son, my dear, dear friend. She could say 
no more, and even the Dowager was affected, for a couple of re- 
bellious tears made sad marks down those wrinkled old roses which 
Esmond had just been allowed to salute. 

“We had a letter from dearest Frank,” his mother said, “three 
days since, whilst you were on your visit to your friend Captain 
Steele, at Hampton. He told us all that you had done, and how 
nobly you had put yourself between him and that — that wretch.” 

“And I adopt you from this day,” says the Dowager; “and I 
wish I was richer, for your sake, son Esmond,” she added with a 
* wave of her hand ; and as Mr. Esmond dutifully went down on his 
knee before her Ladyship, she cast her eyes up to the ceiling (the 
gilt chandelier, and the twelve wax-candles in it, for the party was 
numerous), and invoked a blessing from that quarter upon the newly 
adopted son. 

“ Dear Frank,” says the other Viscountess, “ how fond he is of 
his military profession ! He is studying fortification very hard. I 
wish he were here. We shall keep his coming of age at Castlewood 
next year.” 

“ If the campaign permit us,” says Mr. Esmond. 

“ I am never afraid when he is with you,” cries the boy’s mother. 
“I am sure my Henry will always defend him.” 

“ But, there will be a peace before next year ; we know it for 
certain,” cries the Maid of Honour. “Lord Marlborough will be 


278 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

dismissed, and that horrible Duchess turned out of all her places. 
Her Majesty won’t speak to her now. Did you see her at Bushy, 
Harry? She is furious, and she ranges about the Park like a lioness, 
and tears people’s eyes out.” 

“ And the Princess Anne will send for somebody,” says my Lady 
of Chelsey, taking out her medal and kissing it. 

“ Did you see the King at Oudenarde, Harry ? ” his mistress 
asked. She was a staunch Jacobite, and would no more have 
thought of denying her King than her God. 

“ I saw the young Hanoverian only,” Harry said. “ The 
Chevalier de St. George ” 

“ The King, sir, the King ! ” said the ladies and Miss Beatrix ; 
and she clapped her pretty hands, and cried, “ Vive le Roy ! ” 

By this time there came a thundering knock, that drove in the 
doors of the house almost. It was three o’clock, and the company 
were arriving ; and presently the servant announced Captain Steele 
and his lady. 

Captain and Mrs. Steele, who were the first to arrive, had 
driven to Kensington from their country house, the Hovel at 
Hampton Wick. “Not from our mansion in Bloomsbury Square,” 
as Mrs. Steele took care to inform the ladies. Indeed Harry had 
ridden away from Hampton that very morning, leaving the couple 
by the ears ; for from the chamber where he lay, in a bed that was 
none of the cleanest, and kept awake by the company which he 
had in his own bed, and the quarrel which was going on in the 
next room, he could hear both night and morning the curtain 
lecture which Mrs. Steele was in the habit of administering to poor 
Dick. 

At night it did not matter so much for the culprit ; Dick was 
fuddled, and when in that way no scolding could interrupt his bene- 
volence. Mr. Esmond could hear him coaxing and speaking in that 
maudlin manner, which punch and claret produce, to his beloved 
Prue, and beseeching her to remember that there was a distiivisht 
officer ithe rex rooh, who would overhear her. She went on, never- 
theless, calling him a drunken wretch, and was only interrupted in 
her harangues by the Captain’s snoring. 

In the morning, the unhappy victim awoke to a headache and 
consciousness, and the dialogue of the night was resumed. “ Why do 
you bring captains home to dinner when there’s not a guinea in the 
house ? How am I to give dinners when you leave me without a 
shilling ? How am I to go trapesing to Kensington in my yellow 
satin sack before all the fine company ? I’ve nothing fit to put on ; 
I never have : ” and so the dispute went on — Mr. Esmond inter- 
rupting the talk when it seemed to be growing too intimate by 


MRS. STEELE 279 

blowing his nose as loudly as ever he could, at the sound of which 
trumpet there came a lull. But Dick was charming, though his 
wife was odious, and ’twas to give Mr. Steele pleasure that the 
ladies of Castlewood, who were ladies of no small fashion, invited 
Mrs. Steele. 

Besides the Captain and his lady there was a great and notable 
assemblage of company : my Lady of Chelsey having sent her 
lacqueys and liveries to aid the modest attendance at Kensington. 
There was Lieutenant-General Webb, Harry’s kind patron, of whom 
the Dowager took possession, and who resplended in velvet and gold 
lace ; there was Harry’s new acquaintance, the Right Honourable 
Henry St. John, Esquire, the General’s kinsman, who was charmed 
with the Lady Castlewood, even more than with her daughter; 
there was one of the greatest noblemen in the kingdom, the Scots 
Duke of Hamilton, just created Duke of Brandon in England ; and 
two other noble Lords of the Tory party, my Lord Ashburnham, 
and another I have forgot ; and for ladies, her Grace the Duchess of 
Ormonde and her daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Betty, 
the former one of Mistress Beatrix’s colleagues in waiting on the 
Queen. 

“ What a party of Tories ! ” whispered Captain Steele to 
Esmond, as we were assembled in the parlour before dinner. In- 
deed, all the company present, save Steele, were of that faction. 

Mr. St. John made his special compliments to Mrs. Steele, 
and so charmed her that she declared she would have Steele a 
Tory too. 

“Or will you have me a Whig?” says Mr. St. John. “I 
think, madam, you could convert a man to anything.” 

“ If Mr. St. John ever comes to Bloomsbury Square I will teach 
him what I know,” says Mrs. Steele, dropping her handsome eyes. 
“ Do you know Bloomsbury Square?” 

“ Do I know the Mall ? Do I know the Opera ? Do I know 
the reigning toast? Why, Bloomsbury is the very height of the 
mode,” says Mr. St. John. “ ’Tis rus in urhe. You have gardens 
all the way to Hampstead, and palaces round about you — South- 
ampton House and Montague House.” 

“ Where you wretches go and fight duels,” cries Mrs. Steele. 

“ Of which the ladies are the cause ! ” says her entertainer. 
“Madam, is Dick a good swordsman? How charming the Tatler 
is ! We all recognised your portrait in the 49th number, and I 
have been dying to know you ever since I read it. ‘ Aspasia must 
be allowed to be the first of the beauteous order of love.’ Doth 
not tlie passage run so ? ‘ In this accomplished lady love is the 

constant effect, though it is never the design ; yet though her mien 


280 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an 
immediate check to loose behaviour, and to love her is a liberal 
education.’ ” 

“ Oh, indeed ! ” says Mrs. Steele, who did not seem to under- 
stand a word of what the gentleman was saying. 

“ Who could fail to be accomplished under such a mistress 1 ” 
says Mr. St. John, still gallant and bowing. 

“ Mistress ! upon my word, sir ! ” cries the lady. “ If you mean 
me, sir, I would have you know that I am the Captain’s wife.” 

“ Sure we all know it,” answers Mr. St. John, keeping his 
countenance very gravely ; and Steele broke in saying, “ ’Twas 
not about Mrs. Steele I writ that paper — though I am sure she 
is worthy of any compliment I can pay her — but of the Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings.” 

“ I hear Mr. Addison is equally famous as a wit and a poet,” 
says Mr. St. John. “Is it true that his hand is to be found in 
your Tatler, Mr. Steeled’ 

“ Whether ’tis the sublime or the humorous, no man can come 
near him,” cries Steele. 

“A fig, Dick, for your Mr. Addison ! ” cries out his lady : “a 
gentleman who gives himself such airs and holds his head so high 
now. I hope your Ladyship thinks as I do : I can’t bear those 
very fair men with white eyelashes — a black man for me.” (All 
the black men at table applauded, and made Mrs. Steele a bow 
for this compliment.) “As for this Mr. Addison,” she went on, 
“ he comes to dine with the Captain sometimes, never says a word 
to me, and then they walk upstairs, both tipsy, to a dish of tea. 
I remember your Mr. Addison when he had but one coat to his 
back, and that with a patch at the elbow.” 

“ Indeed — a patch at the elbow ! You interest me,” says Mr. 
St. John. “ ’Tis charming to hear of one man of letters from the 
charming wife of another.” 

“ La, I could tell you ever so much about ’em,” continues the 
voluble lady. “ What do you think the Captain has got now ? — 
a little hunchback fellow — a little hop-o’-my-thumb creature that 
he calls a poet — a little Popish brat ! ” 

“ Hush ! there are two in the room,” whispers her companion. 

“Well, I call him Popish because his name is Pope,” says the 
lady. “ ’Tis only my joking way. And this little dwarf of a 
fellow has wrote a pastoral poem — all about shepherds and shep- 
herdesses, you know.” 

“ A shepherd should have a little crook,” says my mistress, 
laughing from her end of the table : on which Mrs. Steele said, 
“ She did not know, but the Captain brought home this queer little 


281 


AVE DRINK TOASTS 

creature when she was in bed with her first hoy, and it was a mercy 
he had come no sooner • and Dick raved about liis genus, and was 
always raving about some nonsense or other.” 

“Which of the Tatlers do you prefer, Mrs. Steele?” asked 
Mr. St. John. 

“ I never read but one, and think it all a pack of rubbish, 
sir,” says the lady. “ Such stuff about Bickerstaffe, and Distaff, 
and Quarterstaff, as it all is ! There’s the Captain going on still 
with the burgimdy — I know he’ll be tipsy before he stops — Captain 
Steele ! ” 

“ I drink to your eyes, my dear,” says the Captain, who seemed 
to think his wife charming, and to receive as genuine all the satiric 
compliments which Mr. St. John paid her. 

All this while the Maid of Honour had been trying to get Mr. 
Esmond to talk, and no doubt voted him a dull fellow. For, by 
some mistake, just as he was going to pop into the vacant place, 
he was placed far away from Beatrix’s chair, who sat between his 
Grace and my Lord Ashburnham, and shrugged her lovely white 
shoulders, and cast a look as if to say, “ Pity me,” to her cousin. 
My Lord Duke and his young neighbour were presently in a very 
animated and close conversation. Mrs. Beatrix could no more help 
using her eyes than the sun can help shining, and setting those it 
shines on a-burning. By the time the first course was done the 
dinner seemed long to Esmond ; by the time the soup came he 
fancied they must have been hours at table ; and as for the sweets 
and jellies he thought they never would be done. 

At length the ladies rose, Beatrix throwing a Parthian glance at 
her duke as she retreated ; a fresh bottle and glasses were fetched, 
and toasts were called. Mr. St. John asked his Grace the Duke of 
Hamilton and the company to drink to the health of his Grace the 
Duke of Brandon. Another lord gave General Webb’s health, 
“and may he get the command the bravest officer in the world 
deserves.” Mr. Webb thanked the company, complimented his 
aide-de-camp, and fought his famous battle over again. 

“ II est fatiguant,” whispers Mr. St. John, “ avec sa trompette 
de Wynendael.” 

Captain Steele, who was not of our side, loyally gave the health 
of the Duke of Marlborough, the greatest general of the age. 

“ I drink to the greatest general with all my heart,” says 
Mr. Webb; “there can be no gainsaying that character of him. 
My glass goes to the General, and not to the Duke, Mr. Steele.” 
And the stout old gentleman emptied his bumper ; to which Dick, 
replied by filling and emptying a pair of brimmers, one for the 
General and one for the Duke. 


282 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


And now his Grace of Hamilton, rising up with flashing eyes 
(we had all been drinking pretty freely), proposed a toast to the 
lovely, to the incomparable Mrs. Beatrix Esmond ; we all drank it 
with cheers, and my Lord Ashburnham especially, with a shout of 
enthusiasm. 

“ What a pity there is a Duchess of Hamilton ! ” whispers St. 
John, who drank more wine and yet was more steady than most of 
the others, and we entered the drawing-room where the ladies were 
at their tea. As for poor Dick, we were obliged to leave him alone 
at the dining-table, where he was hiccupping out the lines from the 
“ Campaign,” in which the greatest poet had celebrated the greatest 
general in the world ; and Harry Esmond found him, half-an-hour 
afterwards, in a more advanced stage of liquor, and weeping about 
the treachery of Tom Boxer. 

The drawing-room was all dark to poor Harry, in spite of the 
grand illumination. Beatrix scarce spoke to him. When my Lord 
Duke went away, she practised upon the next in rank, and plied 
my young Lord Ashburnham with all the fire of her eyes and the 
fascinations of her wit. Most of the party were set to cards, and 
Mr. St. John, after yawning in the face of Mrs. Steele, whom he 
did not care to pursue any more, and talking in his most brilliant 
animated way to Lady Oastlewood, whom he pronounced to be 
beautiful, of a far higher order of beauty than her daughter, presently 
took his leave, and went his way. The rest of the company speedily 
followed, my Lord Ashburnham the last, throwing fiery glances at 
the smiling young temptress, who had bewitched more hearts than 
his in her thrall. 

No doubt, as a kinsman of the house, Mr. Esmond thought fit 
to be the last of all in it ; he remained after the coaches had rolled 
away — after his dowager aunt’s chair and flambeaux had marched 
off in the darkness towards Chelsey, and the town’s people had 
gone to bed, who had been drawn into the square to gape at the 
unusual assemblage of chairs and chariots, lacqueys, and torchmen. 
The poor mean wretch lingered yet for a few minutes, to see 
whether the girl would vouchsafe him a smile, or a parting word of 
consolation. But her enthusiasm of the morning was quite died 
out, or she chose to be in a different mood. She fell to joking 
about the dowdy appearance of Lady Betty, and mimicked the 
vulgarity of Mrs. Steele ; and then she put up her little hand to 
her mouth and yawned, lighted a taper, and shrugged her shoulders, 
and dropping Mr. Esmond a saucy curtsey, sailed off to bed. 

“ The day began so well, Henry, that I had hoped it might have 
ended better,” was all the consolation that poor Esmond’s fond 
mistress could give him ; and as he trudged home through the dark 


MY LORD ASHBURNHAM 


283 


alone, he thought with bitter rage in his heart, and a feeling of 
almost revolt against the sacrifice he had made : — “ She would have 
me,” thought he, “ had I hut a name to give her. But for my pro- 
mise to her father, I might have my rank and my mistress too.” 

I suppose a man’s vanity is stronger than any other passion in 
him ; for I blush, even now, as I recall the humiliation of those 
distant days, the memory of which still smarts, though the fever of 
balked desire has passed away more than a score of years ago. 
When the writer’s descendants come to read this memoir, I wonder 
will they have lived to experience a similar defeat and shame? 
Will they ever have knelt to a woman, who has listened to them, 
and played with them, and laughed with them— who beckoning 
them with lures and caresses, and with Yes smiling from her eyes, 
has tricked them on to their knees, and turned her back and left 
them ? All this shame Mr. Esmond had to undergo ; and he sub- 
mitted, and revolted, and presently came crouching back for more. 

After this feste, my young Lord Ashburnham’s coach was for 
ever rolling in and out of Kensington Square ; his lady-mother came 
to visit Esmond’s mistress, and at every assembly in the town, 
wherever the Maid of Honour made her appearance, you might be 
pretty sure to see the young gentleman in a new suit every week, 
and decked out in all the finery that his tailor or embroiderer could 
furnish for him. My Lord was for ever paying Mr. Esmond com^ 
pliments ; bidding him to dinner, offering him horses to ride, and 
giving him a thousand uncouth marks of respect and good-will. At 
last, one night at the coffee-house, whither my Lord came consider- 
ably flushed and excited with drink, he rushes up to Mr. Esmond, 
and cries out, “ Give me joy, my dearest Colonel ; I am the happiest 
of men.” 

“The happiest of men needs no dearest colonel to give him 
joy,” says Mr. Esmond. “What is the cause of this supreme 
felicity % 

“ Haven’t you heard ? ” says he. “ Don’t you know ? I thought 
the family told you everything ; the adorable Beatrix hath promised 
to be mine.” 

“ What ! ” cries out Mr. Esmond, who had spent happy hours 
with Beatrix that very morning — had writ verses for her, that she 
had sung at the harpsichord. 

“ Yes,” says he ; “I waited on her to-day. I saw you walking 
towards Knightsbridge as I passed in my coach ; and she looked so 
lovely, and spoke so kind, that I couldn’t help going down on my 
knees, and — and — sure I ,am the happiest of men in all the world ; 
and I’m very young ; but she says I shall get older : and you know 
I shall be of age in four months ; and there’s very little difference 


284 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


between us ; and I’m so happy, I should like to treat the company 
to something. Let us have a bottle — a dozen bottles — and drink 
the health of the finest woman in England.” 

Esmond left the young lord tossing off bumper after bumper, 
and strolled away to Kensington to ask whether the news was 
true. ’Twas only too sure : his mistress’s sad, compassionate face 
told him the story ; and then she related what particulars of it she 
knew, and how my young lord had made his offer, half-an-hour after 
Esmond went away that morning, and in the very room where the 
song lay yet on the harpischord, which Esmond had writ, and they 
had sung together. 



. /iU >• 

. . . 


BOOK III 

CONTAINING THE END OF MR. ESMOND’S ADVENTURES 
IN ENGLAND 

CHAPTER 1 

I COME TO AN END OF MY BATTLES AND BRUISES 

T hat feverish desire to gain a little reputation which Esmond 
had had, left him now perhaps that he had attained some 
portion of his wish, and the great motive of his ambition 
was over. His desire for military honour was that it might raise 
him in Beatrix’s eyes. ’Twas, next to nobility and wealth, the only 
kiivii of rank she valued. It was the stake quickest won or lost 
too ; for law is a very long game that requires a life to practise ; 
and to be distinguished in letters or the Church would not have 
f >rwarded the poor gentleman’s plans in the least. So he had no 
suit to play but the red one, and he played it ; and this, in truth, 
was the reason of his speedy promotion ; for he exposed himself 
/more than most gentlemen do, and risked more to win more. Is 
j he tlie only man that hath set his life against a stake which may 
be not worth the winning 1 Another risks his life (and his honour, 
too, sometimes) against a bundle of bank-notes, or a yard of blue 
riband, or a seat in Parliament; and some for the mere pleasure 
and excitement of the sport ; as a field of a hundred huntsmen will 
do, each out-bawling and out-galloping the other at the tail of a 
dirty fox, that is to be the prize of the foremost happy conqueror. 

When he heard this news of Beatrix’s engagement in marriage. 
Colonel Esmond knocked under to his fate, and resolved to surrender 
his sword, that could win him nothing now he cared for ; and in 
this dismal frame of mind he determined to retire from the regiment, 
to the great delight of the captain next in rank to him, who 
happened to be a young gentleman of good fortune, who eagerly 
paid Mr. Esmond a thousand guineas for his majority in Webb’s 
regiment, and was knocked on the head the next campaign. Perhaps 


286 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

iJsmoiid would not have been sorry to share his fate. He was 
more the Knight of the AVoeful Countenance than ever he had been. 
His moodiness must have made him perfectly odious to his friends 
under the tents, who like a jolly fellow, and laugh at a melancholy 
warrior always sighing after Dulcinea at home. 

Both the ladies of Castlewood approved of Mr. Esmond quitting 
the army, and his kind General coincided in his wish of retirement 
and helped in the transfer of his commission, which brought a pretty 
sum into his pocket. But when the Commander-in-Chief came 
home, and was forced, in spite of himself, to appoint Lieutenant- 
Greneral Webb to the command of a division of the army in Flanders, 
the Lieutenant-General prayed Colonel Esmond so urgently to be 
his aide-de-camp and military secretary, that Esmond could not 
resist his kind patron’s entreaties, and again took the field, not 
attached to any regiment, but under Webb’s orders. What must 
have been the continued agonies of fears * and apprehensions which 
racked the gentle breasts of wives and matrons in those dreadful 
days, when every Gazette brought accounts of deaths and battles, 
and when, the present anxiety over, and the beloved person escaped, 
the doubt still remained that a battle might be fought, possibly, of 
which the next Flanders letter would bring the account ; so they, 
the poor tender creatures, had to go on sickening and trembling 
through the whole campaign. Whatever these terrors were . on die 
part of Esmond’s mistress (and that tenderest of women must ha ^e 
felt them most keenly for both her sons, as she called them), she 
never allowed them outwardly to appear, but hid her apprehension 
as she did her charities and devotion. ’Twas only by chance that 
Esmond, wandering in Kensington, found his mistress coming out 
of a mean cottage there, and heard that she had a score of poor 
retainers, whom she visited and comforted in their sickness and 
poverty, and who blessed her daily. She attended the early church 
daily (though of a Sunday, especially, she encouraged and advanced 
all sorts of cheerfulness and innocent gaiety in her little household) ; 
and by notes entered into a table-book of hers at this time, and 
devotional compositions writ with a sweet artless fervour, such as 
the best divines could not surpass, showed how fond her heart was, 
how humble and pious her spirit, what pangs of apprehension she 
endured silently, and with what a faithful reliance she committed 
the care of those she loved to the awful Dispenser of deatli and life. 

As for her Ladyship at Chelsey, Esmond’s newly adopted 
mother, she was now of an age when the danger of any second 
party doth not disturb the rest much. She cared for trumps more 
than for most things in life. She was firm enough in her own 
* What indeed? Psm. xci. 2, 3, 7. — R. E. 


MONSIEUR GAUTHIER 287 

faith, but no longer very bitter against ours. She had a very good- 
natured, easy French director. Monsieur Gauthier by name, who 
was a gentleman of the world, and w^ould take a hand of cards with 
Dean Atterbury, my Lady’s neighbour at Chelsey, and was well 
with all the High Church party. No doubt Monsieur Gauthier 
knew what Esmond’s peculiar position was, for he corresponded 
with Holt, and always treated Colonel Esmond with particular 
respect and kindness; but for good reasons the Coloirel and the 
Abb^ never spoke on this matter together, and so they remained 
perfect good friends. 

All the frequenters of my Lady of Chelsey’s house were of the 
Tory and High Church party. Madam Beatrix was as frantic 
about the King as her elderly kinswoman : she wore his picture 
on her heart ; she had a piece of his hair ; she vowed he was the 
most injured, and gallant, and accomplished, and unfortunate, and 
beautiful of princes. Steele, who quarrelled with very many of 
his Tory friends, but never with Esmond, used to tell the Colonel 
that his kinswoman’s house was a rendezvous of Tory intrigues; 
that Gauthier was a spy ; that Atterbury was a spy ; that letters 
were constantly going from that house to the Queen at St. Germains; 
on which Esmond, laughing, would reply, that they used to say in 
the army the Duke of Marlborough was a spy too, and as much in 
corresjKindence with that family as any Jesuit. And without enter- 
ing very eagerly into the controversy, Esmond had frankly taken 
the side of his family. It seemed to him that King James the 
Third was undoubtedly King of England by right: and at his sister’s 
death it would be better to have him than a foreigner over us. No 
man admired King William more ; a hero and a conqueror, the 
bi'aveijt, justest, wisest of men — but ’twas by the sword he con- 
quered the country, and held and governed it by the very same 
right that the great Cromwell held it, who was truly and greatly a 
sovereign. But that a foreign despotic prince, out of Germany, who 
happened to be descended from King James the First, shordd take 
possession of this empire, seemed to Mr. Esmond a monstrous in- 
justice— -at least, every Englishman had a right to protest, and the 
English prince, the heir-at-law, the first of all. What man of spirit 
with iuch a cause would not back it “? What man of honour with 
such a crown to win would not fight for it ? But that l ace was 
destined. That Prince had himself against him, an enemy he could 
not overcome. He never dared to draw his sword, though he had 
it. He let his chances slip by as he lay in the lap of opera-girls, or 
snivelled at the knees of priests, asking pardon ; and the blood of 
her«)es, and the devotedness of honest hearts, and endurance, courage, 
fidelity, were all spent for him in vain. 


288 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

But let us return to my Lady of Clielsey, who, when her son 
Esmond announced to her Ladyship that he proposed to make tlie 
ensuing campaign, took leave of him with perfect alacrity, and was 
down to piquet with her gentlewoman before he had well quitted 
the room on his last visit. “Tierce to a king” were the last words 
he ever heard her say : the game of life was pretty nearly over for 
the good lady, and three months afterwards she took to her bed, 
where she flickered out without any pain, so the Abbd Gauthier 
wrote over to Mr. Esmond, then with his General on the frontier of 
France. The Lady Castlewood was with her at her ending, and had 
written too, but these letters must have been taken by a privateer 
in the packet that brought them ; for Esmond knew nothing of their 
contents until his return to England. 

My Lady Castlewood had left everything to Colonel Esmond, 
“as a reparation for the wrong done to him ; ” Twas writ in her 
will. But her fortune was not much, for it never had been large, 
and the honest Viscountess had wisely sunk most of the money 
she had upon an annuity which terminated with her life. ' How- 
ever, there was the house and furniture, plate and pictures at 
Clielsey, and a sum of money lying at her merchant’s, ^^r Josiah 
Child, which altogether would realise a sum of near three hundred 
pounds per annum, so that Mr. Esmond found himself, if not rich, 
at least easy for life. Likewise there were the famous diamonds 
which had been said to be worth fabulous sums, though the gold- 
smith pronounced they would fetch no more than four t.lv)(i-;;j,nd 
pounds. These diamonds, however. Colonel Esmond reservo<l, 
having a special use for them; but the Clielsey liousi'., plate, 
goods, &c., with the exception of a few articles which he kept 
back, were sold by his orders; and the sums resulting from the 
sale invested in the public securities so as to realise the aforesaid 
annual income of three hundred pounds. 

Having now something to leave, he made a will and despatclied 
it home. The army was now in presence of the enemy ; and a. 
great battle expected every day. ’Twas known that the General- 
in-Chief was in disgrace, and the parties at home strong against 
him, and there was no stroke this great and resolute player would 
not venture to recall his fortune when it seemed desperate. Frank 
Castlewood was with Colonel Esmond ; his General having gladly 
taken the young nobleman on to his staff. His studies of fortifica- 
tion at Bruxelles were over by this time. The fort he was besieging 
had yielded, I believe, and my Lord had not only marched in 
with flying colours, but marched out again. He used to tell his 
boyish wickednesses with admirable liumour, and was the most 
charming young scapegrace in the army. 


MALPLAQUET 289 

’Tis needless to say that Colonel Esmond had left every penny 
of his little fortune to this boy. It was the Colonel’s firm convic- 
tion that the next battle would put an end to him : for he felt 
aweary of the sun, and quite ready to bid that and the earth 
farewell. Frank would not listen to his comrade’s gloomy fore- 
bodings, but swore they would keep his birthday at Castlewood 
that autumn, after the campaign. He had heard of the engagement 
at home. “ If Prince Eugene goes to London,” says Frank, “ and 
Trix can get hold of him, she’ll jilt Ashburnham for his Highness. 
I tell you, she used to make eyes at the Duke of Marlborough, 
when she was only fourteen, and ogling poor little Blandford. / 
wouldn’t marry her, Harry — no, not if her eyes were twice as 
big. I’ll take my fun. I’ll enjoy for the next three years every 
possible pleasure. I’ll sow my wild oats then, and marry some 
quiet, steady, modest, sensible Viscountess ; hunt my harriers ; 
and settle down at Castlewood. Perhaps I’ll represent the county 
— no, damme, you shall represent the county. You have the 
brains of the family. By the Lord, my dear old Harry, you have 
the best head and the kindest heart in all the army; and every 
man says so — and when the Queen dies, and the King comes back, 
why shouldn’t you go to the House of Commons, and be a Minister, 
and be made a Peer, and that sort of thing? You be shot in the 
next action ! I wager a dozen of burgundy you are not touched. 
Mohun is well of his wound. He is always with Corporal John 
now. As soon as ever I see his ugly face I’ll spit in it. I took 
lessons of Father— of Captain Holt at Bruxelles. What a man 
that is ! He knows everything.” Esmond bade Frank have a 
care ; that Father Holt’s knowledge was rather dangerous ; not, 
indeed, knowing as yet how far the Father had pushed his instruc- 
tions with his young pupil. 

The gazetteers and writers, both of the French and English 
side, have given accounts sufficient of that bloody battle of Blareg- 
nies or Malplaquet, which was the last and the hardest earned of 
the victories of the great Duke of Marlborough. In that tremendous 
combat near upon two hundred and fifty thousand men were engaged, 
more than thirty thousand of whom were slain or wounded (the 
Allies lost twice as many men as they killed of the French, whom 
they conquered) : and this dreadful slaughter very likely took place 
because a great General’s credit was shaken at home, and he thought 
to restore it by a victory. If such were the motives which induced 
the Duke of Marlborough to venture that prodigious stake, and 
desperately sacrifice thirty thousand brave lives, so that he might 
figure once more in a Gazette, and hold his places and pensions a 
little longer, the event defeated the dreadful and selfish design, for 

7 T 


S90 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

the victory was purchased at a cost which no nation, greedy of 
glory as it might be, would willingly pay for any triumph. The 
gallantry of the French was as remarkable as the furious bravery 
of their assailants. We took a few score of their flags, and a few 
pieces of their artillery ; but we left twenty thousand of the bravest 
soldiers of the world round about the intrenched lines, from which 
the enemy w^as driven. He retreated in perfect good order ; the 
I)anic-spell seemed to be broke under which the French had laboured 
ever since the disaster of Hochstedt; and, fighting now on the 
threshold of their country, they showed an lieroic ardour of resist- 
ance, such as had never met us in tlie course of their aggressive 
war. Had the battle been more successful, the conqueror might 
have got the price for which he waged it. As it was (and justly, I 
think), the party adverse to the Duke in England were indignant 
at the lavish extravagance of slaughter, and demanded more eagerly 
than ever the recall of a chief whose cupidity and desperation might 
urge him further still. After this bloody fight of Malplaquet, I 
can answer for it, that in the Dutch quarters and our own, and 
amongst the very regiments and commanders whose gallantry was 
most conspicuous upon this frightful day of carnage, the general 
cry was, that there was enough of the war. The French were 
driven back into their own boundary, and all their conquests and 
booty of Flanders disgorged. As for the Prince of Savoy, with 
whom our Commander-in-Chief, for reasons of his own, consorted 
more closely than ever, ’twas known that he ' was animated not 
merely by a political hatred, but by personal rage against the old 
French King ; the Imperial Generalissimo never forgot the slight 
put by Lewis upon the Abb^ de Savoie ; and in the humiliation or 
ruin of his most Christian Majesty, the Holy Roman Emperor found 
his account. But what were these quarrels to us, the free citizens 
of England and Holland ? Despot as he was, the French monarch 
was yet the chief of European civilisation, more venerable in his 
age and misfortunes than at the period of his most splendid suc- 
cesses ; whilst his opponent was but a semi-barbarous tyrant, with 
a pillaging, murderous horde of Croats and Pandours, composing a 
half of his army, filling our camp with their strange figures, bearded 
like the miscreant Turks their neighbours, and carrying into Chris- 
tian warfare their native heathen habits of rapine, lust, and murder. 
Why should the best blood in England and France be shed in order 
that the Holy Roman and Apostolic master of these ruffians should 
have his revenge over the Christian King? And it was to this end 
we were fighting ; for this that every village and family in England 
was deploring the death of beloved sons and fathers. We dared 
not speak to each other, even at table, of Malplaquet, so frightful 


A GLOOMY PAGEANT 


m 

were the gaps left in oiir army by tlie cannon of that bloody action. 
’Twas heartrending for an officer who had a heart to look down his 
line on a parade-day afterwards, and miss himdreds of faces of 
comrades — humble or of high rank — that had gathered but yester- 
day full of courage and cheerfulness round the torn and blackened 
flags. Where were our friends 1 As the great Duke reviewed us, 
riding along our lines with his fine suite of prancing aides-de-camp 
and generals, stopping liere and there to thank an officer with those 
eager smiles and bows of which his Grace was always lavish, s(;arce 
a huzzah could be got for him, though Cadogaii, with an oath, rode 

up and cried, “ D you, why don’t you cheer ? ” But the men 

had no heart for that : not one of them but was thinking, “ Where’s 
my comrade ? — where’s my brother that fought by me, or my dear 
captain that led me yesterday 1 ” ’Twas the most gloomy pageant 
I ever looked on ; and the Te Deum ” sung by our chaplains, the 
most woeful and dreary satire. 

Esmond’s General added one more to the many marks of honour 
which he had received in the front of a score of battles, and got 
a wound in the groin, which laid him on his back ; and you may 
be sure he consoled himself by abusing tiie Commander-in-Chief, as 
he lay groaning : “ Corporal John’s as fond of me,” he used to say, 
“as King David wa's of General Uriah ; and so he always gives me 
the post of danger.” He persisted, to his dying day, in believing 
that the Duke intended he should be beat at Wynendael, and sent 
him purposely with a small lorce, hoping that he might be knocked 
on the head there. Esmond and Frank Castlewood both escaped 
without hurt, though the division which our General commanded 
suffered even more than any other, having to sustain not only the 
fury of the enemy’s cannonade, which was very hot and well served, 
but the furious and repeated charges of the famous Maison du Boy, 
which we had to receive and beat off again and again, with volleys 
of shot and hedges of iron, and our four lines of musqueteers and 
pikemen. They said the King of England charged us no less than 
twelve times that day, along with the French Household. Esmond’s 
late regiment. General Webb’s own Fusileers, served in the division 
which their Colonel commanded. The General was thrice in the 
centre of the square of the Fusileers, calling the fire at the French 
charges, and, after the action, his Grace the Duke of Berwick sent 
his compliments to his old regiment and their Colonel for their 
behaviour on the field. 

We drank my Lord Castlewood’s health and majority, the 25th 
of September, the army being then before Mons : and here Colonel 
Esmond was not so fortunate as he had been in actions much more 
dangerous, and was hit by a spent ball just above the place where 


S92 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

his former wound was, which caused the old wound to open again, 
fever, spitting of blood, and other ugly symptoms, to ensue ; and, 
in a word, brought him near to death’s door. The kind lad, 
his kinsman, attended his elder comrade with a very j^raiseworthy 
affectionateness and care until he was pronounced out of danger by 
the doctors, wlien Frank went off, passed the winter at Bruxelles, 
and besieged, no doubt, some other fortress there. Very few lads 
would have given up their pleasures so long and so gaily as Frank 
did ; his cheerful prattle soothed many long days of Esmond’s pain 
and languor. Frank was supposed to be still at his kinsman’s 
bedside for a month after he had left it, for letters came from his 
mother at home full of thanks to the younger gentleman for his care 
of his elder brother (so it pleased Esmond’s mistress now affection- 
ately to style him) ; nor was Mr. Esmond in a hurry to undeceive 
her, when the good young fellow was gone for his Christmas holiday. 
It was as pleasant to Esmond on his couch to watch the young man’s 
pleasure at the idea of being free, as to note his simple efforts to 
disguise his satisfaction on going away. There are days when a flask 
of champagne at a cabaret, and a red-cheeked partner to share it, 
are too strong temptations for any young fellow of spirit. I am 
not going to play the moralist, and cry “ Fie ! ” For ages past, I 
know how old men preach, and what young men practise ; and that 
patriarchs have had their weak moments too, long since Father 
Noah toppled over after discovering the vine.- Frank went oft*, 
then, to his pleasures at Bruxelles, in which capital many young 
fellows of our army declared they found infinitely greater diversion 
even than in London : and Mr. Henry Esmond remained in his sick- 
room, where he writ a fine comedy, that his mistress pronounced to 
be sublime, and that was acted no less than three successive nights 
in London in the next year. 

Here, as he lay nursing himself, ubiquitous Mr. Holt reappeared, 
and stopped a whole month at Mons, where he not only won over 
Colonel Esmond to the King’s side in politics (that side being always 
held by the Esmond family) ; but where he endeavoured to re-open 
the controversial question between the Churches once more, and to 
recall Esmond to that religion in which, in his infancy, he had been 
baptized. Holt was a casuist, both dexterous and learned, and 
presented the case between the English Church and his own in such 
a way that those who granted his premises ought certainly to allow 
his conclusions. He touched on Esmond’s delicate state of health, 
chance of dissolution, and so forth ; and enlarged upon the immense 
benefits that tlie sick man was likely to forego — benefits which the 
Church of England did not deny to those of tlie Roman Communion, 
as how should she, being deriv^ed from that Church, and only an 


THE RIGHT DIVINE 


293 


offshoot from it 1 But Mr. Esmond said that his Church was the 
Church of his country, and to that he chose to remain faithful ; 
other people Avere welcome to worship and to subscribe any other 
set of articles, Avhether at Rome or at Augsburg. But if the 
good Father meant that Esmond should join the Roman com- 
munion for fear of consequences, and that all England ran the risk 
of being damned for heresy, Esmond, for one, was j)erfectly willing 
to take his chance of the penalty along with the countless millions 
of his fellow-countrymen, who were bred in the same faith, and along 
with some of the noblest, the truest, the purest, the wisest, the 
most pious and learned men and women in the world. 

As for the political question, in that Mr. Esmond could agree 
with the Father much more readily, and had come to the same 
conclusion, though, perhaps, by a different way. The right divine, 
about which Dr. Sacheverel and the High Church party in England 
were just now making a bother, they were welcome to hold as they 
chose. If Richard Cromwell and his father before him had been 
crowned and anointed (and bishops enough would have been found 
to do it), it seemed to Mr. Esmond that they would have had the 
right divine just as much as any Plantagenet, or Tudor, or Stuart. 
But the desire of the country being unquestionably for an hereditary 
monarchy, Esmond thought an English king out of St. Germains 
was better and fitter than a German prince from Herrenhausen, 
and that if he failed to satisfy the nation, some other Englishman 
might be found to take his place ; and so, though with no frantic 
enthusiasm, or worship of that monstrous pedigree which the Tories 
chose to consider divine, he was ready to say, “God save King 
James ! ” when Queen Anne went the Avay of kings and commoners. 

“ I fear. Colonel, you are no better than a republican at heart,” 
says the priest with a sigh. 

“I am an Englishman,” says Harry, “and take my country 
as I find her. The will of the nation being for Church and King, 
I am for Church and King too ; but English Church and English 
King; and that is why your Church isn’t mine, though your 
King is.” 

Though they lost the day at Malplaquet, it was the French 
who were elated by that action, whilst the conquerors were dis- 
spirited by it ; and the enemy gathered together a larger army than 
ever, and made prodigious efforts for the next campaign. Marshal 
Berwick was with the French this year; aud we heard that 
Mareschal Villars was still suffering of his Avound, was eager to bring 
our Duke to action, and vowed he would fight us in his coach. 
Young Castlewood came flying back from Bruxelles as soon as lie 
heard that fighting was to begin ; and the arrival of the Chevalier 


294 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

de St. George was aniiouiiced about May. “ It’s the King’s third 
campaign, and it’s mine,” Frank liked saying. He was come back 
a greater Jacobite than ever, and Esmond suspected that some fair 
conspirators at Bruxelles had been inflaming the young man’s ardour. 
Indeed, he owned that he had a message from the Queen, Beatrix’s 
godmother, who had given her name to Frank’s sister the year 
before he and his sovereign were born. 

However desirous Mareschal Villars might be to flght, my Lord 
Duke did not seem disposed to indulge him this campaign. Last 
year his Grace had been all for the Whigs and Hanoverians ; but 
finding, on going to England, his country cold towards himself, and 
the people in a ferment of High Church loyalty, the Duke comes 
back to his army cooled towards the Hanoverians, cautious with the { 
Imperialists, and particularly civil and polite toAvards the Chevalier i 
de St. George. ’Tis certain that messengers and letters were con- ■ 

tinually passing between his Grace ami his brave nephew, the Duke j 

of Berwick, in the opposite camp. No man’s caresses were more ■ 

opportune than his Grace’s, and no man ever uttered expressions of i 

regard and affection more generously. He professed to Monsieur de ; 

Torcy, so Mr. St. John told the writer, quite an eagerness to be cut 
in pieces for the exiled Queen and her family ; nay more, I believe, 
this year he parted with a portion of the most precious part of 
himself — his money — which he sent over to the royal exiles. Mr. 
Tunstal, who was in the Prince’s service, was twice or thrice in and 
out of our camp ; tlie French, in theirs of Arlieu and about Arras. 

A little river, the Canihe I think ’twas called (but this is Avrit j 

away from books and Europe ; and the only map the Avriter hath i 

of these scenes of his youth, bears no mark of this little stream), ; 

divided our picquets from the enemy’s. Our sentries talked across ! 

the stream, Avhen they could make themselves understood to each 
other, and when they could not, grinned, and handed each other i 

their brandy-flasks or their pouches of tobacco. And one fine day j 

of June, riding thither witli the officer Avho visited the outposts j 

(Colonel Esmond was taking an airing on horseback, being too weak ! 

for military duty), they came to tliis river, where a number of ' 

English and Scots AA^ere assembled, talking to the good-natured ^ 

enemy on the other side. ' 

Esmond was especially amused witli the talk of one long fellow, 
Avith a great curling red moustache, and blue eyes, that was half- 
a-dozen inches taller than his swarthy little comrades on the French 
side of the stream, aiid being asked by the Colonel, saluted him, 
and said that he belonged to the Royal Cravats. 

From his way of saying “Royal Cravat,” Esmond at once 
knew that the felloAv’s tongue had first Avagged on the banks of 


WE SEE THE KING 295 

the Liffey, and not the Loire ; and the poor soldier — a deserter 
probably — did not like to venture very deep into French conversa- 
tion, lest his unlucky brogue should peep out. He chose to restrict 
himself to such few expressions in the French language as he thought 
he had mastered easily ; and his attempt at disguise was infinitely 
amusing. Mr. Esmond whistled Lillibullero, at which Teague’s 
eyes began to twinkle, and then flung him a dollar, when the poor 
boy broke out with a “ God bless — that is, Dieu bdnisse votre 
honor,” that would infallibly have sent him to the provost-marshal 
had he been on our side of the river. 

Whilst this parley was going on, three officers on horseback, 
on the French side, appeared at some little distance, and stopped 
as if eyeing us, when one of them left the other two, and rode close 
up to us who were by the stream. “ Look, look ! ” says the Royal 
Cravat, with great agitation, “ pas lui, that’s he ; not him, I’autre,” 
and pointed to the distant officer on a chestnut horse, with a cuirass 
shining in the sun, and over it a broad blue riband. 

“ Please to take Mr. Hamilton’s services to my Lord Marl- 
borough — my Lord Duke,” says the gentleman in English ; and 
looking to see that the party were not hostilely disposed, he added, 
with a smile, “ There’s a friend of yours, gentlemen, yonder ; he 
bids me to say that he saw some of your faces on the 11th of 
September last year.” 

As the gentleman spoke, the other two officers rode up, and 
came quite close. We knew at once who it was. It was the King, 
then two-and-twenty years old, tall and slim, with deep-brown 
eyes, that looked melancholy, though his lips wore a smile. We took 
off our hats and saluted him. No man, sure, could see for the first 
time, without emotion, the youthful inheritor of so much fame and 
misfortune. It seemed to Mr. Esmond that the Prince Avas not un- 
like young Castlewood, Avhose age and figure he resembled. The 
Chevalier de St. George acknowledged the salute, and looked at us 
hard. Even the idlers on our side of the river set up a hurrah. As 
for the Royal Cravat, he ran to the Prince’s stirrup, knelt down 
and kissed his boot, and bawled and looked a hundred ejaculations 
and blessings. The Prince bade the aide-de-camp give him a piece 
of money ; and when the party saluting us had ridden away. Cravat 
spat upon the piece of gold by way of benediction, and swaggered 
away, pouching his coin and twirling his honest carroty moustache. 

The officer in whose company Esmond was, the same little captain 
of Handyside’s regiment, Mr. Sterne, Avho had proposed the garden 
at Lille, when my Lord Mohun and Esmond had their affair, was 
an Irishman too, and as brave a little soub as ever wore a sword. 

Bedad,” says Roger Sterne, “ that long fellow spoke French so 


296 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

beautiful that I shouldn’t have known he wasn’t a foreigner, till 
he broke out with his hulla-ballooing, and only an Irish calf can 
bellow like that.” And Roger made another remark in his wild 
way, in which there was sense as well as absurdity : “If that 
young gentleman,” says he, “would but ride over to our camp, 
instead of Villars’s, toss up his hat and say, ‘ Here am I, the King, 
who’ll follow me 1 ’ by the Lord, Esmond, the whole army would 
rise and carry him home again, and beat Villars, and take Paris 
by the way.” 

The news of the Prince’s visit was all through the camp quickly, 
and scores of ours went down in hopes to see him. Major Hamilton, 
whom we had talked with, sent back by a trumpet several silver 
pieces for officers with us. Mr. Esmond received one of these ; and 
that medal, and a recompense not uncommon amongst Princes, were 
the only rewards he ever had from a Royal person whom he en- 
deavoured not very long after to serve 

Esmond quitted the army almost immediately after this, follow- 
ing his General home ; and, indeed, being advised to travel in the 
fine weather and attempt to take no further part in the campaign. 
But he heard from the army, that of the many who crowded to see 
the Chevalier de St. George, Frank Castlewood had made himself 
most conspicuous : my Lord Viscount riding across the little stream 
bareheaded to where the Prince was, and dismounting and kneeling 
before him to do him homage. Some said that the Prince had 
actually knighted him, but my Lord denied that statement, though 
he acknowledged the rest of the story, and said : “ From having 
been out of favour with Corporal John,” as he called the Duke, 
“before, his Grace warned him not to commit those follies, and 
smiled on him cordially ever after.” 

“ And he was so kind to me,” Frank writ, “ that I thought I 
would put in a good word for Master Harry, but when I mentioned 
your name he looked as black as thunder, and said he had never 
heard of you.” 


CHAPTER II 


/ GO HOME, AND HARP ON THE OLD STRING 
^TER quitting Mons and the army, and as he was waiting for 



a packet at Ostend, Esmond had a letter from his young 


^ kinsman Castlewood at Bruxelles, conveying intelligence 
whereof Frank besought him to be the bearer to London, and which 
caused Colonel Esmond no small anxiety. 

The young scapegrace, being one-and-twenty years old, and 
being anxious to sow his “wild otes,” as he wrote, had married 
Mademoiselle de Wertheim, daughter of Count de Wertheim, 
Chamberlain to the Emperor, and having a post in the Household 
of the Governor of the Netherlands “ F.S.,” the young gentleman 
wrote ; “ Clotilda is older than me, which perhaps may be objected 
to her ; but I am so old a raik that the age makes no difference, 
and I am determined to reform. We were married at St. Gudule, 
by Father Holt. She is heart and soul for the good cause. And 
here the cry is Vif-le-Roy, which my mother will join in, and Trix 
too. Break this news to ’em gently : and tell Mr. Finch, my agent, 
to press the people for their rents, and send me the ryno anyhow. 
Clotilda sings, and plays on the spinet beautifully. She is a fair 
beauty. And if it’s a son, you shall stand Godfather. I’m going 
to leave the army, having had enuf of soldering ; and my Lord 
Duke recommends me. I shall pass the winter here : and stop at 
least until Clo’s lying-in. I call her old Clo, but nobody else 
shall. She is the cleverest woman in all Bruxelles : understanding 
painting, music, poetry, and perfect at cookery and puddens. I 
horded with the Count, that’s how I came to know her. There are 
four Counts her brothers. One an Abbey — three with the Prince’s 
army. They have a lawsuit for an immence fortune : but are now 
in a pore way. Break this to mother, who’ll take anything from 
you. And write, and bid Finch write amediately. Hostel de 
I’Aigle Noire, Bruxelles, Flanders.” 

So Frank had married a Roman Catholic lady, and an heir was 
expected, and Mr. Esmond was to carry this intelligence to his 
mistress at London. ’Twas a difficult embassy ; and the Colonel 
felt not a little tremor as he neared the capital. 


298 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

He reached his inn late, and sent a messenger to Kensington 
to announce his arrival and visit the next morning. The messenger 
brought back news that the Court was at Windsor, and the fair 
Beatrix absent and engaged in her duties there. Only Esmond’s 
mistress remained in her house at Kensington. She appeared in 
Court but once in the year; Beatrix was quite the mistress and 
ruler of the little mansion, inviting the company thither, and 
engaging in every conceivable frolic of town pleasure ; whilst her 
mother, acting as the young lady’s protectress and elder sister, pur- 
sued her own path, which was quite modest and secluded. 

As soon as ever Esmond was dressed (and he had been awake 
long before the town), he took a coach for Kensington, and reached 
it so early that he met his dear mistress coming home from morning 
prayers. She carried her prayer-book, never allowing a footman 
to bear it, as everybody else did : and it was by this simple sign 
Esmond knew what her occupation had been. He called to the 
coachman to stop, and jumped out as she looked towards him. 
She wore her hood as usual, and she turned quite pale when she 
saw him. To feel that kind little hand near to his heart seemed 
to give him strength. They were soon at the door of her Lady- 
ship’s house — and within it. 

With a sweet sad smile she took his hand and kissed it. 

“ How ill you liave been : how weak you look, my dear Henry ! ” 
she said. 

’Tis certain the Colonel did look like a ghost, except that ghosts 
do not look very happy, ’tis said. Esmond always felt so on return- 
ing to her after absence, indeed whenever he looked in her sweet 
kind face. 

“I am come back to be nursed by my family,” says he. “If 
Frank had not taken care of me after my wound, very likely I 
should have gone altogether.” 

“ Poor Frank, good Frank ! ” says his mother. “You’ll always 
be kind to him, my Lord,” she went on. “ The poor child never 
knew he was doing you a wrong.” 

“ My Lord ! ” cries out Colonel Esmond. “ What do you mean, 
dear lady ? ” 

“ I am no lady,” says she ; “I am Rachel Esmond, Francis 
Esmond’s widow, my Lord. I cannot bear that title. Would we 
never had taken it from him who has it now. But we did all in 
our power, Henry : we did all in our power ; and my Lord and I 
— that is ” 

“ Who told you this tale, dearest lady ] ” asked the Colonel. 

Have you not had the letter I writ you? I writ to you at 
Mons directly I heard it,” says Lady Esmond. 


THE DOWAGER’S LEGACY 299 

“ And from whom 1 ” again asked Colonel Esmond — and his 
mistress then told him that on her deathbed the Dowager Countess, 
sending for her, had presented lier with this dismal secret as a 
legacy. “ ’Twas very malicious of the Dowager,” Lady Esmond 
said, “to have had it so long, and to have kept the truth from 
me.” “ Cousin Rachel,” she said — and Esmond’s mistress could 
not forbear smiling as she told the story — “ Cousin Rachel,” cries 
the Dowager, “ I have sent for you, as the doctors say I may go 
off any day in this dysentery ; and to ease my conscience of a great 
load that has been on it. You always have been a poor creature 
and unfit for great honour, and what I have to say won’t, therefore, 
affect you so much. You must know. Cousin Rachel, that I have 
left my house, plate, and furniture, three thousand pounds in money, 
and my diamonds that my late revered Saint and Sovereign, King 
James, presented me with, to my Lord Viscount Castlewood.” 

“ To my Frank ? ” says Lady Castlewood : “ I was in 

hopes ” 

“ To Viscount Castlewood, my dear ; Viscount Castlewood and 
Baron Esmond of Shandon in the Kingdom of Ireland, Earl and 
Marquis of Esmond under patent of his Majesty King James the 
Second, conferred upon my husband the late Marquis — for I am 
Marchioness of Esmond before God and man.” 

“And have you left poor Harry nothing, dear Marchioness T’ 
asks Lady Castlewood (she hath told me the story completely since 
with her quiet arch way ; the most charming any woman ever had : 
and I set down the narrative here at length, so as to have done 
with it). “ And have you left poor Harry nothing ? ” asks my 
dear lady : “ for you know, Henry,” she says with her sweet smile, 
“ I used always to pity Esau — and I think I am on his side — ■ 
though papa tried very hard to convince me the other way.” 

“ Poor Harry ! ” says the old lady. “ So you want something 
left to poor Harry : he, — he ! (reach me the drops, cousin). Well, 
then, my dear, since you want poor Harry to have a fortune, you 
must understand that ever since the year 1691, a week after the 
battle of the Boyne, where the Prince of Orange defeated his royal 
sovereign and father, for which crime he is now suffering in flames 
(ugh ! ugh !), Henry Esmond hath been Marquis of Esmond and 
Earl of Castlewood in the United Kingdom, and Baron and Viscount 
Castlewood of Shandon in Ireland, and a Baronet — and his eldest 
son will be, by courtesy, styled Earl of Castlewood — he ! he ! 
What do you think of that, my dearU’ 

“ Gracious mercy ! how long have you known this?” cries the 
other lady (thinking perhaps that the old Marchioness was wandering 
in her wits). 


300 THE HISTORY OF HEHRY ESMOND 

“ My liiisband, before he was converted, was a wicked wretch,” 
the sick sinner continued. “ When he was in the Low Countries 
he seduced a weaver’s daughter ; and added to his wickedness by 
marrying her. And then he came to this country and married me 
— a poor girl — a poor innocent young thing — I say,” — “though 
she was past forty, you know, Harry, when she married : and as 

for being innocent ” “ Well,” she went on, “ I knew nothing 

of my Lord’s wickedness for three years after our marriage, and 
after the burial of our poor little boy I had it done over again, my 
dear : I had myself married by Father Holt in Castlewood chapel, 
as soon as ever I heard the creature was dead — and having a great 
illness then, arising from another sad disappointment I had, the 
priest came and told me that my Lord had a son before our marriage, 
and that the child was at nurse in England ; and I consented to let 
the brat be brought home, and a queer little melancholy child it 
was when it came. 

“ Our intention was to make a priest of him : and he was bred 
for this, until you perverted him from it, you wicked woman. And 
I had again hopes of giving an heir to my Lord, when he was called 
away upon the King’s business, and died fighting gloriously at the 
Boyne water. 

“ Should I be disappointed — I owed your husband no love, my 
dear, for he had jilted me in the most scandalous way — I thought 
there would be time to declare the little weaver’s son for the true 
heir. But I was carried off to prison, where your husband was so 
kind to me — urging all his friends to obtain my release, and using 
all his credit in my favour-^that I relented towards him, especially 
as my director counselled me to be silent ; and that it was for the 
good of the King’s service that the title of our family should con- 
tinue with your husband the late Viscount, whereby his fidelity 
would be always secured to the King. And a proof of this is, that 
a year before your husband’s death, when he thought of taking a 
place under the Prince of Orange, Mr. Holt went to him, and told 
him what the state of the matter was, and obliged him to raise a 
large sum for his Majesty, and engaged him in the true cause so 
heartily, that we were sure of his support on any day when it 
should be considered advisable to attack the usurper. Then his 
sudden death came ; and there was a thought of declaring the truth. 
But ’twas determined to be best for the King’s service to let the 
title still go with the younger branch ; and there’s no sacrifice a 
Castlewood wouldn’t make for that cause, my dear. 

“ As for Colonel Esmond, he knew the truth already.” (“ And 
then, Harry,” my mistress said, “ she told me of what had happened 
at my dear Imsband’s deathbed.”) “ He doth not intend to take 


FAMILY SECRETS 


301 


the title, though it belongs to him. But it eases my conscience that 
you should know the truth, my dear. And your son is lawfully 
Viscount Castlewood so long as his cousin doth not claim the rank.’' 

This was the substance of the Dowager’s revelation. Dean 
Atterbury had knowledge of it. Lady Castlewood said, and Esmond 
very well knows how : that divine being the clergyman for whom 
the late lord had sent on his deathbed ; and when Lady Castlewood 
would instantly have written to her son, and conveyed the truth to 
him, the Dean’s advice was that a letter should be writ to Colonel 
Esmond rather ; that the matter should be submitted to his decision, 
by which alone the rest of the family were bound to abide. 

“ And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be ? ” says the 
Colonel. 

“ It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house.” 

“ It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord’s bedside,” 
says Colonel Esmond. “ The children must know nothing of this. 
Frank and his heirs after him must bear our name. ’Tis his right- 
fully : I have not even a proof of that marriage of my father and 
mother, though my poor lord, on his deathbed, told me that Father 
Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it 
when I was abroad. I went and looked at my poor mother’s grave 
in her convent. What matter to her now? No court of law on 
earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and 
set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady ; but Frank is 
Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would 
turn monk, or disappear in America.” 

As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have 
been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the 
fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed 
both his hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such 
as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and 
thankful that God had given him the power to show his love for her, 
and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able 
to bestow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest 
blessing conferred upon a man — and what wealth or name, or gratifi- 
cation of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure 
Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his 
best and dearest friends ? 

“ Dearest saint,” says he — “ purest soul, that has had so much 
to sufter, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure 
of love ! ’Tis for me to kneel, not for you ; ’tis for me to be thank- 
ful that I can make you happy. Hath my life any other aim? 
Blessed be God that I can serve you ! What pleasure, think you, 
could all the world give me compared to that ? ” 


302 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“Don’t raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who 
would have lifted her. “ Let me kneel— let me kneel, and— and — 
worship you.” 

Before such a partial judge as Esmond’s dear mistress owned 
herself to be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given 
in his favour ; and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling 
her to the news whereof he was bearer, of her son’s marriage to a 
foreign lady. Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could 
be brought to think so ill of that religion as other people in England 
thought of it : she held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the 
Catholic Church, but that the Roman was one of the main stems on 
which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted (she was, for a 
woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy, having 
acted, £us a girl, as secretary to her father, the late Dean, and 
written many of his sermons, under his dictation) ; and if Frank 
had chosen to marry a lady of the Church of South Europe, as she 
would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she 
should not welcome her as a daughter-in-law : and accordingly she 
wrote to her new daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond 
thought, who had cognisance of it before it went), in which the 
only hint of reproof was a gentle remonstrance that her son had not 
written to herself, to ask a fond mother’s blessing for that step 
which he was about taking. “ Castlewood knew very well,” so she 
wrote to her son, “ that she never denied him anything in her power 
to give, much less would she think of opposing a marriage that was 
to make his happiness, as , she trusted, and keep him out of wild 
courses, which had alarmed her a good deal : ” and she besought 
liim to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house 
of Castlewood (“It is his family house,” says she to Colonel Esmond, 
“ though only his own house by your forbearance ”) and to receive 
the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years’ minority. By 
care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition 
than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars ; and my Lord 
was now master of a pretty, small income, not encumbered of debts, 
as it had been during his father’s ruinous time. “ But in saving 
my son’s fortune,” says she, “ I fear I have lost a great part of my 
hold on him.” And, indeed, this was the case: her Ladyship’s 
daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and 
nothing for her ; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow, 
simple way of his mother’s living at Walcote, where he had been 
brought up more like a poor parson’s son than a young nobleman 
that was to make a figure in the world. ’Twas this mistake in his 
early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when 


FRANK CHANGES HIS RELIGION 


303 


he had it in his power ; nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled 
by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so useful 
for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in rank 
or natural parts ; in whose society they lose the overweening sense 
of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly 
learn. 

But, as a prodigal that’s sending in a schedule of his debts to 
his friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue 
keeps back some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn’t dare to 
own ; so the poor Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break 
to his mother, and which he hadn’t the courage to introduce into 
his first confession. Some misgivings Esmond might have, upon 
receiving Frank’s letter, and knowing into what hands the boy had 
fallen ; but whatever these misgivings were, he kept them to him- 
self, not caring to trouble his mistress with any fears that might be 
groundless. 

However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank 
had received his mother’s letters there, brought back a joint com- 
position from himself and his wife, who could spell no better than 
her young scapegrace of a husband, full of expressions of thanks, 
love, and duty to the Dowager Viscountess, as my poor lady now 
was styled ; and along with this letter (which was read in a family 
council, namely, the Viscountess, Mistress Beatrix, and the writer 
of this memoir, and which was pronounced to be vulgar by the 
Maid of Honour, and felt to be so by the other two) there came a 
private letter for Colonel Esmond from poor Frank, with another 
dismal commission for the Colonel to execute, at his best oppor- 
tunity ; and this was to announce that Frank had seen fit, “ by the 
exhortation of Mr. Holt, the influence of his Clotilda, and the bless- 
ing of Heaven and the saints,” says my Lord demurely, “ to change 
his religion, and be received into the bosom of that Church of which 
his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the 
civilised world, were members.” And his Lordship added a post- 
script, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it 
had the genuine twang of the Seminary, and was quite unlike poor 
Frank’s ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded 
Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church ; and that 
his mother and sister should have his Lordship’s prayers to the 
saints (an inestimable benefit, truly !) for their conversion. 

If Esmond had wanted to keep this secret, he could not ; for a 
day or two after receiving this letter, a notice from Bruxelles ap- 
peared in the Post-Boy and other prints, announcing that “ a young 
Irish lord, the Viscount C-stlew— d, just come to his^ majority, 
and who had served the last campaigns with great credit, as aide- 


304 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


de-camp to his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, had declared for 
the Popish religion at Bruxelles, and had walked in a procession 
barefoot, with a wax-taper in his hand.” The notorious Mr. Holt, 
who had been employed as a Jacobite agent during the last reign, 
and many times pardoned by King William, had been, the Post-Boy 
said, the agent of this conversion. 

The Lady Castlewood was as much cast down by this news as 
Miss Beatrix was indignant at it. “ So,” says she, “ Castlewood is 
no longer a home for us, mother. Frank’s foreign wife will bring 
her confessor, and there will be frogs for dinner; and all Tusher’s 
and my grandfather’s sermons are flung away upon my brother. I 
used to tell you that you killed him with the Catechism, and that 
he would turn wicked as soon as he broke from his mammy’s lead- 
ing-strings. 0 mother, you would not believe that the young 
scapegrace was playing you tricks, and that sneak of a Tusher was 
not a fit guide for him. Oh, those parsons, I hate ’em all ! ” says 
Mistress Beatrix, clapping her hands together ; “ yes, whether they 
wear cassocks and buckles, or beards and bare feet. There’s a 
horrid Irish wretch who never misses a Sunday at Court, and who 
pays me compliments there, the horrible man ; and if you want to ' 
know what parsons are, you should see his behaviour, and hear him 
talk of his own cloth. They’re all the same, whether they’re 
bishops, or bonzes, or Indian fakirs. They try to domineer, and 
they frighten us with kingdom come ; and they wear a sanctified 
air in public, and expect us to go down on our knees and ask their ! 

blessing ; and they intrigue, and they grasp, and they backbite, and j 

they slander worse than the worst courtier or the wickedest old 
woman. I heard this Mr. Swift sneering at my Lord Duke of I 

Marlborough’s courage the other day. He ! that Teague from j 

Dublin ! because his Grace is not in favour, dares to say this of | 

him ; and he says this that it may get to her Majesty’s ear, and | 

to coax and wheedle Mrs. Masham. They say the Elector of ! 

Hanover has a dozen of mistresses in his Court at Herrenhausen, 
and if he comes to be king over us, I wager that the bishops and 
Mr. Swift, that wants to be one, will coax and wheedle them. Oh, 
those priests and their grave airs ! I’m sick of their square toes and 
their rustling cassocks. I should like to go to a country where 
there was not one, or turn Quaker, and get rid of ’em ; and I would, 
only the dress is not becoming, and I’ve much too pretty a figure to 
hide it. Haven’t I, cousin 1 ” and here she glanced at her person 
and the looking-glass, which told her rightly that a more beautiful 
shape and face never were seen. 

“ I made that onslaught on the priests,” says Miss Beatrix, 
afterwards, “ in order to divert my poor dear mother’s anguish 


305 


A PARSON-HATER 

about Frank. Frank is as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls 
being vain, what are xve to you ? It was easy to see that the first 
woman who chose would make a fool of him, or the first robe — I 
count a priest and a woman all the same. We are always caballing ; 
we are not answerable for the fibs we tell ; we are always cajoling 
and coaxing, or threatening ; and we are always making mischief. 
Colonel Esmond — mark my word for that, who know the world, 
sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how 
Frank’s marriage hath been managed. The Count, our papa-in-law, 
is always away at the coffee-house. The Countess, our mother, is 
always in the kitchen looking after the dinner. The Countess, our 
sister, is at the spinet. When my Lord comes to say he is going 
on the campaign, the lovely Clotilda bursts into tears, and faints— 
so ; he catches her in his arms — no, sir, keep your distance, cousin, 
if you please— she cries on his shoulder, and he says, ‘ 0 my 
divine, my adored, my beloved Clotilda, are you sorry to part with 
me?’ ‘0 my Francisco,’ says she, ‘0 my Lord!’ and at this 
verv instant mamma and a couple of young brothers, with mous- 
taclies and long rapiers, come in from the kitchen, where they have 
been eating bread and onions. Mark my word, you will have all 
this woman’s relations at Castlewood three months after she has 
arrived there. The old count and countess, and the young counts, 
and all the little countesses her sisters. Counts ! every one of 
these wretches says he is a count. Guiscard, that stabbed Mr. 
Harvey, said he was a count ; and I believe he was a barber. All 
Frenchmen are barbers — Fiddledee ! don’t contradict me — or else 
dancing-masters, or else priests.” And so she rattled on. 

“ Who was it taught you to dance. Cousin Beatrix ? ” says the 
Colonel. 

She laughed out the air of a minuet, and swept a low curtsey, 
coming up to the recover with the prettiest little foot in the world 
pointed out. Her mother came in as she was in this attitude ; my 
Lady had been in her closet, having taken poor Frank’s conversion 
in a very serious way ; the madcap girl ran up to her mother, put 
her arms round her waist, kissed her, tried to make her dance, and 
said, “ Don’t be silly, you kind little mamma, and cry about Frank 
turning Papist. What a figure he must be, with a white sheet and 
a candle, walking in a procession barefoot ! ” And she kicked off 
her little slippers (the wonderfullest little shoes with wonderful tall 
red heels : Esmond pounced upon one as it fell close beside him), 
and she put on the drollest little moue^ and marched up and down 
the room holding Esmond’s cane by way of taper. Serious as her 
mood was. Lady Castlewood could not refrain from laughing ; and 
as for Esmond he looked on with that delight with which the sight 
7 T7 


306 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


of this fair creature always inspired him ; never had he seen any 
woman so arch, so brilliant, and so beautiful. 

Having finished her march, she put out her foot for her slipper. 
The Colonel knelt down : “If you will be Pope I will turn Papist,” 
says he ; and her Holiness gave him gracious leave to kiss the little 
stockinged foot before he put the slipper on. 

Mamma’s feet began to pat on the floor during this operation, 
and Beatrix, whose bright eyes nothing escaped, saw that little 
mark of impatience. She ran up and embraced her mother, with 
her usual cry of, “0 you silly little mamma : your feet are quite 
as pretty as mine,” says she : “ they are, cousin, though she hides 
’em ; but the shoemaker will tell you that he makes for both off 
the same last.” 

“You are taller than I am, dearest,” says her mother, blushing 
over her whole sweet face — “ and — and it is your hand, my dear, 
and not your foot he wants you to give him ; ” and she said it with 
a hysteric laugh, that had more of tears tlian laughter in it ; laying 
her head on lier daughter’s fair shoulder, and hiding it there. They 
made a very pretty picture together, and looked like a pair of 
sisters — the sweet simple matron seeming younger than her years, 
and her daughter, if not older, yet somehow, from a commanding 
manner and grace which she possessed above most women, her 
mother’s superior and protectress. 

“ But oh ! ” cries my mistress, recovering herself after this scene, 
and returning to her usual sad tone, “ ’tis a shame that we should 
laugh and be making merry on a day when we ought to be down on 
our knees and asking pardon.” 

“ Asking pardon for what 1 ” says saucy Mrs. Beatrix — “ because 
Frank takes it into his head to fast on Fridays and worship images I 
You know if you had been born a Papist, mother, a Papist you 
would have remained till the end of your days '? ’Tis the religion of 
the King and of some of the best quality. For my part, I’m no 
enemy to it, and think Queen Bess was not a penny better than 
Queen Mary.” 

“ Hush, Beatrix ! Do not jest with sacred things, and remember 
of what parentage you come,” cries my Lady. Beatrix was ordering 
her ribands, and adjusting her tucker, and performing a dozen 
provokingly pretty ceremonies before the glass. The girl was no 
hypocrite at least. She never at that time could be brought to 
think but of the world and her beauty ; and seemed to have no 
more sense of devotion than some people have of music, that cannot 
distinguish one air from another. Esmond saw this fault in her, as 
he saw many others — a bad wife would Beatrix Esmond make, he 
thought, for any man under the degree of a prince. She was born 


WHAT WE STRUGGLE FOR 


307 


to shine in great assemblies, and to adorn palaces, and to command 
everywhere — to conduct an intrigue of politics, or to glitter in a 
queen’s train. But to sit at a homely table, and mend the stockings 
of a poor man’s children ! that was no fitting duty for her, or at 
least one that she wouldn’t have broke her heart in trying to do. 
She was a princess, though she had scarce a shilling to her fortune ; 
and one of her subjects — the most abject and devoted wretch, sure, 
that ever drivelled at a woman’s knees — was this unlucky gentleman ; 
who bound his good sense, and reason, and independence, hand and 
foot, and submitted them to her. 

And who does not know how ruthlessly women will tyrannise 
when they are let to domineer ? and who does not know how useless 
advice is? I could give good counsel to my descendants, but I 
know they’ll follow their own way, for all their grandfather’s sermon. 
A man gets his own experience about women, and will take nobody’s 
hearsay ; nor, indeed^ is the young fellow worth a fig that would. 
’Tis I that am in love with my mistress, not my old grandmother 
that counsels me : ’tis I that have fixed the value of the thing I 
would have, and know the price I would pay for it. It may be 
worthless to you, but ’tis all my life to me. Had Esmond possessed 
the Great Mogul’s crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke of 
Marlborough’s money, or all the ingots sunk at Vigo, he would 
have given them all for this woman. A fool he was, if you will ; 
but so is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a 
little crystal as big as a pigeon’s egg, and called a diamond : so is 
a wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and 
spend half his life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue 
riband ; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to 
pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip. There’s some particular prize 
we all of us value, and that every man of spirit will venture his 
life for. With this, it may be to achieve a great reputation for 
learning; with that, to be a man of fashion, and the admiration 
of the town ; with another, to consummate a great work of art or 
poetry, and go to immortality that way ; and with another, for a 
certain time of his life, the sole object and aim is a woman. 

Whilst Esmond was under the domination of this passion, he 
remembers many a talk he had with his intimates, who used to 
rally Our Knight of the Rueful Countenance at his devotion, 
whereof he made no disguise, to Beatrix ; and it was with replies 
such as the above he met his friends’ satire. “ Granted, I am a 
fool,” says he, “ and no better than you ; but you are no better 
than I. You have your folly you labour for ; give me the charity 
of mine. What flatteries do you, Mr. St. John, stoop to whisper 
in the ears of a queen’s favourite? What nights of labour doth 


308 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


not the laziest man in the world endure, foregoing his bottle, and 
Ids boon companions, foregoing Lais, in whose lap he would like 
to be yawning, that he may prepare a speech full of lies, to cajole 
three hundred stupid country-gentlemen in the House of Commons, 
and get the hiccupping cheers of the October Club ! What days 
will you spend in your jolting chariot ” (Mr. Esmond often rode 
to Windsor, and especially, of later days, with the Secretary). 

“ What hours will you pass on your gouty feet — and how humbly 
will you kneel down to present a despatch — you, the proudest man 
in the world, that has not knelt to Cod since you were a boy, and I 
in that posture whisper, flatter, adore almost, a stupid woman, 
that’s often boozy with too much meat and drink, when Mr. 
Secretary goes for his audience ! If my pursuit is vanity, sure 
yours is too.” And then the Secretary would fly out in such a 
rich flow of eloquence as this pen cannot pretend to recall ; advo- 
cating his scheme of ambition, showing the great good he would 
do for his country when he was the undisputed chief of it ; backing 
his opinion with a score of pat sentences from Creek and Roman 
authorities (of which kind of learning he made rather an ostentatious 
display), and scornfully vaunting the very arts and meannesses by 
which fools were to be made to follow him, opponents to be bribed 
or silenced, doubters converted, and enemies overawed. 

“I am Diogenes,” says Esmond, laughing, “that is taken up 
for a ride in Alexander’s chariot. I have no desire to vanquish 
Darius or to tame Bucephalus. I do not want what you want, a 
great name or a high place : to have them would bring me no 
pleasure. But my moderation is taste, not virtue; and I know 
that what I do want is as vain as that which you long after. Do 
not grudge me my vanity, if I allow yours ; or rather, let us laugh 
at both indifferently, and at ourselves, and at each other.” 

“ If your charmer holds out,” says St. John, “ at this rate she 
may keep you twenty years besieging her, and surrender by the 
time you are seventy, and she is old enough to be a grandmother. 

I do not say the pursuit of a particular woman is not as pleasant 
,a pastime as any other kind of hunting,” he added; “only, for my 
part, I find the game won’t run long enough. They knock under 
too soon — that’s the fault I find with ’em.” 

“ The game which you pursue is in the habit of being caught, 
and used to being pulled down,” says Mr. Esmond. 

“But Dulcinea del Toboso is peerless, eh?” says the other. 
“Well, honest Harry, go and attack windmills— perhaps thou art 
Jiot more mad tJiajQ other people,” St. John added, with a sigh. 


CHAPTER III 


A PAPER OUT OF THE ^‘SPECTATOR'’ 

D oth any young gentleman of my progeny, who may read 
his old grandfather’s papers, chance to be presently suffering 
under the passion of Love? There is a humiliating cure, 
but one that is easy and almost specific for the malady — which is, 
to try an alibi. Esmond went away from his mistress and was 
cured a half-dozen times ; he came back to her side, and instantly 
fell ill again of the fever. He vowed that he could leave her and 
think no more of her, and so he could pretty well, at least, succeed 
in quelling that rage and longing he had whenever he was with her ; 
but as soon as he returned he was as bad as ever again. Truly a 
ludicrous and pitiable object, at least exhausting everybody’s pity 
but his dearest mistress’s. Lady Castlewood’s, in whose tender 
breast he reposed all his dreary confessions, and who never tired 
of hearing him and pleading for him. 

Sometimes Esmond would think there was hope. Then again 
he would be plagued with despair, at some impertinence or coquetry 
of his mistress. For days they would be like brother and sister, or 
the dearest friends — she, simple, fond, and charming — he, happy 
beyond measure at her good behaviour. But this would all vanish 
on a sudden. Either he would be too pressing, and hint his love, 
when she would rebuff him instantly, and give his vanity a box on 
the ear ; or he would be jealous, and with perfect good reason, of 
some new admirer that had sprung up, or some rich young gentle- 
man newly arrived in the town, that this incorrigible flirt would set 
her nets and baits to draw in. If Esmond remonstrated, the little 
rebel would say, “Who are you? I shall go my own way, sirrah, 
and that way is towards a husband, and I don’t want ^ou on the 
way. I am for your betters. Colonel, for your betters : do you 
hear that ? You might do if you had an estate and were younger : 
only eight years older than I, you say ! pish, you are a hundred 
years older. You are an old, old Graveairs, and I should make 
you miserable, that would be the only comfort I should have in 
marrying you. But you have not money enough to keep a cat 
decently after you have paid your man his wages, and yom’ land- 


310 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

lady her bill. Do you think I am going to live in a lodging, and 
turn the mutton on a string whilst your honour nurses the baby ? 
Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this nonsense knocked out of 
your head when you were in the wars ? You are come back more 
dismal and dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each j 
other. You might be Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the j 
end of your lives.” 

“ At least you own to your wordliness, my poor Trix,” says her 
mother. 

“ Worldliness ! 0 my pretty lady ! Do you think that I am 
a child in the nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey 1 Worldliness, 
to be sure ; and pray, madam, where is the harm of wishing to be 
comfortable ? When you are gone, you dearest old woman, or when j 
lam tired of you and have run away from you, where shall I go ? 
Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish sister-in-law, take the 
children their physic, and whip ’em, and put ’em to bed when they 
are naughty 1 Shall I be Castlewood’s upper servant, and perhaps 
marry Tom Tusher^ Merci ! I have been long enough Frank’s 
humble servant. Why am I not a man ? I have ten times his 

brains, and had I worn the — well, don’t let your Ladyship be 

frightened — had I worn a sword and periwig instead of this mantle 
and commode to which nature has condemned me — (though ’tis \ 

a pretty stuff, too — Cousin Esmond ! you will go to the Exchange j 

to-morrow, and get the exact counterpart of this riband, sir ; do ] 
you hear I) — I would have made our name talked about. So would 
Graveairs here have made something out of our name if he had 
represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done very well. 
Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very 
decent, grave speaker.” And here she began to imitate Esmond’s 
way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously 
that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see j 
there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature. i 

“ Yes,” says she, “ I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that i 
I want a good husband. Where’s the harm of one % My face is • 
my fortune. Who’ll come 1 — buy, buy, buy ! I cannot toil, neither 
can I spin, but I can play twenty-three games on the cards. I 
can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I think I could 
shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years, and 
know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thou- 
sand and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, | 
gambling, and old China. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that j 
you brought me, cousin, is very pretty), the opera, and everything i 
that is useless and costly. I have got a monkey and a little black j 

boy— Pompey, sir, go and give a dish of chocolate to Colonel j 


I WRITE A COMEDY 311 

Graveairs — and a parrot and a spaniel, and I niiist have a husband. 
Cupid, you hearl” 

“ Iss, missis ! ” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peter- 
borow gave her, with a bird of paradise in his turbant, and a collar 
with his mistress’ name on it. 

“Iss, missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child. “And if 
husband not come, Pompey must go fetcli one.” 

And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray as 
Miss Beatrix ran up to her mother and ended lier sally of mischief 
in her common way, with a kiss — no wonder that upon paying such 
a penalty her fond judge pardoned her. 

When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered ; 
and he took a lodging near to his mistresses, at Kensington, glad 
enough to be served by them, and to see tliem day after day. He was 
enabled to see a little company — and of the sort he liked best. Mr. 
Steele and Mr. Addison both did him the honour to visit him ; and 
drank many a glass of good claret at his lodging, whilst their 
entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet drink and gruel. 
These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord Duke 
of Marlborough ; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But 
their different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from 
agreeing in private, nor from allowing, on one evening when 
Esmond’s kind old patron, Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick 
and a crutch, hobbled up to the Colonel’s lodging (which was 
prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between London and Kensington, 
and looking over the Gardens), that the Lieutenant-General was a, 
noble and gallant soldier — and even that he had been hardly used 
in the Wynendael affair. He took his revenge in talk, that must 
be confessed ; and if Mr. Addison had had a mind to write a poem 
about Wynendael, he might have heard from the commander’s own 
lips the story a hundred times over. 

Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature 
for a relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter’s 
copy lieth in my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, “The 
Faithful Fool, a Comedy, as it was performed by her Majesty’s 
Servants.” ’Twas a very sentimental piece ; and Mr. Steele, who 
had more of that kind of sentiment than Mr. Addison, admired it, 
whilst the other rather sneered at the performance ; though he 
owned that, here and there, it contained some pretty strokes. He 
was bringing out his own play of “ Cato ” at the time, the blaze of 
which quite extinguished Esmond’s farthing candle ; and his name 
was never put to the piece, which was printed as by a Person of 
Quality. Only nine copies were sold, though Mr. Dennis, the great 


312 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

critic, praised it, and said ’twas a work of great merit ; and Colonel 
Esmond had the whole impression burned one day in a rage, by J ack 
Lockwood, his man. 

All this comedy was full of bitter satiric strokes against a certain 
young lady. The plot of the piece was quite a new one. A young 
woman was represented with a great number of suitors, selecting 
a pert fribble of a peer, in place of the hero (but ill acted, I think, 
by Mr. Wilks, the Faithful Fool), who persisted in admiring her. 

In the fifth act, Teraminta was made to discover the merits of 
Eugenio (the F. F.), and to feel a partiality for him too late ; for he 
announced that he had bestowed his hand and estate upon Rosaria, 
a country lass, endowed with every virtue. But it must be owned 
that the audience yawned through the play ; and that it perished 
on the third night, with only half-a-dozen persons to behold its 
agonies. Esmond and his two mistresses came to the first night, and 
Miss Beatrix fell asleep ; whilst her mother, who had not been to 
a play since King James the Second’s time, thought the piece, though 
not brilliant, had a very pretty moral. 

Mr. Esmond dabbled in letters, and wrote a deal of prose and 
verse at this time of leisure. When displeased with the conduct 
of Miss Beatrix, he would compose a satire, in which he relieved his 
mind. When smarting under the faithlessness of women, he dashed 
off a copy of verses, in which he held the whole sex up to scorn. i 

One day, in one of these moods, he made a little joke, in which 
(swearing him to secrecy) he got his friend Dick Steele to help him ; 
and, composing a paper, he had it printed exactly like Steele’s 
paper, and by his printei*, and laid on his mistress’ breakfast-table 
the following — 

“ Spectator. 

“No. 341. Tuesday^ April 1, 1712. ^ 

Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur. — Horace.' 

Thyself the moral of the Fable see. — Creech. 

“Jocasta is known as a woman of learning and fashion, and 
as one of the most amiable persons of this court and country. She 
is at home two mornings of the week, and all the wits and a few 
of the beauties of London flock to her assemblies. When she goes 
abroad to Tunbridge or the Bath, a retinue of adorers rides the 
journey with her ; and besides the London beaux, she has a crowd 
of admirers at the Wells, the polite amongst the natives of Sussex 
and Somerset pressing round her tea-tables, and being anxious for 
a nod from her chair. Jocasta’s acquaintance is thus very numerous. 
Indeed, ’tis one smart writer’s work to keep her visHing-book — 


JOCASTA 


313 


a strong footman is engaged to carry it ; and it would require a 
much stronger head even than J ocasta’s own to remember the names 
of all her dear friends. 

“Either at Epsom Wells or Tunbridge (for of this important 
matter Jocasta cannot be certain) it was her Ladyship’s fortune 
to become acquainted with a young gentlem^-n, whose conversation 
was so sprightly, and manners amiable, that she invited the agree- 
able young spark to visit her if ever he came to London, where 
her house in Spring Garden should be open to him. Charming as 
he was, and without any manner of doubt a pretty fellow, Jocasta hath 
such a regiment of the like continually marching round her standard, 
that ’tis no wonder her attention is distracted amongst them. And 
so, though this gentleman made a considerable impression upon her, 
and touched her heart for at least three-and-twenty minutes, it 
must be owned that she has forgotten his name. He is a dark 
man, and may be eight-and-twenty years old. His dress is sober, 
though of rich materials. He has a mole on his forehead over his 
left eye ; has a blue riband to his cane and sword, and wears his 
own hair. 

“ Jocasta was much flattered by beholding her admirer (for that 
everybody admires who sees her is a point which she never can for 
a moment doubt) in the next pew to her at St. James’s Church 
last Sunday ; and the manner in which he appeared to go to sleep 
during the sermon — though from under his fringed eyelids it was 
evident he was casting glances of respectful rapture towards Jocasta 
— deeply moved and interested her. On coming out of church he 
found his way to her chair, and made her an elegant bow as she 
stepped into it. She saw him at Court afterwards, where he carried 
himself with a most distinguished air, though none of her acquaint- 
ances knew his name ; and the next night he was at the play, where 
her Ladyship was pleased to acknowledge him from the side-box. 

“ During the whole of the comedy she racked her brains so to 
remember his name that she did not hear a word of the piece : and 
having the happiness to meet him once more in the lobby of the 
playhouse, she went up to him in a flutter, and bade him remember 
that she kept two nights in the week, and that she longed to see 
him at Spring Garden. 

“ He appeared on Tuesday, in a rich suit, showing a very fine 
taste both in the tailor and wearer ; and though a knot of us were 
gathered round the charming Jocasta, fellows who pretended to 
know every face upon the town, not one could tell the gentleman’s 
name in reply to Jocasta’s eager inquiries, flung to the right and 
left of her as he advanced up the room with a bow that would 
become a duke. 


314. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ Jocasta acknowledged this salute with one of those smiles and 
curtseys of which that lady hath the secret. She curtseys with a 
languishing air, as if to say, ‘ You are come at last, I have been 
pining for you : ’ and then she finishes her victim with a killing 
look, which declares : ‘ 0 Philander ! I have no eyes but for you.’ 
Camilla hath as good a curtsey perhaps, and Thalestris much such 
another look ; but the glance and the curtsey together belong to 
Jocasta of all the English beauties alone. 

“ ‘ Welcome to London, sir,’ says she. ‘ One can see you are 
from the country by your looks.’ She would have said ‘Epsom,’ 
or ‘ Tunbridge,’ had she remembered rightly at which place she had 
met the stranger ; but, alas ! she had forgotten. j 

“ The gentleman said, ‘ he had been in town but three days ; 
and one of his reasons for coming hither was to have the honour 
of paying his court to Jocasta.’ 

“ She said, ‘ the waters had agreed with her but indifferently.’ 

“‘The waters were for the sick,’ the gentleman said: ‘the 
young and beautiful came but to make them sparkle. And as the 
clergyman read the service on Sunday,’ he added, ‘your Ladyship 
reminded me of the angel that visited the pool.’ A murmur of 
approbation saluted this sally. Manilio, who is a wit when he is 
not at cards, was in such a rage that tie revoked when he heard it. 

“Jocasta was an angel visiting the waters; but at which of the 
Bethesdas 1 She was puzzled more and more ; and, as her way 
always is, looked the more innocent and simple, the more artful 
her intentions were. 

“‘We were discoursing,’ says she, ‘about spelling of names 
and words when you came. Why should we say goold and write 
gold, and call china chayney, and Cavendish Candish, and Chol- 
mondeley Chumley^ If we call Pulteney Poltney, why shouldn’t 
we call poultry pultry — and ’ i 

“ ‘ Such an enchantress as your Ladyship,’ says he, ‘ is mistress 
of all sorts of spells.’ But this was Dr. Swift’s pun, and we all 
knew it. 

“ ‘ And — and how do you spell your name ? ’ says she, coming . 
to the point at length ; for this sprightly conversation had lasted 
much longer than is here set down, and been carried on through at 
least three dishes of tea. 

“ ‘Oh, madam,’ says he, ‘/ spell my name with the y.’ And 
laying down his dish, my gentleman made another elegant bow, and 
was gone in a moment, 

“Jocasta hath had no sleep since this mortification, and the 
stranger’s disappearance. If balked in anything she is sure to 
lose her health and temper ; and we, her servants, suffer, as usual. 


JOCASTA 315 

during the angry fits of our Queen. Can you help us, Mr. Spectator, 
who know everything, to read this riddle for her, and set at rest 
all our minds 1 We find in her list, Mr. Berty, Mr. Smith, Mr. 
Pike, Mr. Tyler— who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr. Smyth, Mr. Pyke, 
Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away the clerk 
of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of children. 
Bead me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your admirer 
— (Edipus.” 


“The Trumpet Coffee-house, Whitehall, 

“Mr. Spectator, — I am a gentleman but little acquainted 
with the town, though I have had a university education, and 
passed some years serving my country abroad, where my name is 
better known than in the coffee-houses and St. James’s. 

“ Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in 
the county of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, 
after my mourning was over, and on the look-out, if truth must be 
told, for some young lady who would share with me the solitude 
of my great Kentish house, and be kind to my tenantry (for whom 
a woman can do a great deal more good than the best-intentioned 
man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady of London, who 
was the toast of all the company at the Wells, Every one knows 
Saccharissa’s beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better 
than herself. 

“ My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven- 
and-twenty sets with her at the Assembly. I treated her to the 
fiddles twice. I was admitted on several days to her lodging, and 
received by her with a great deal of distinction, and, for a time, 
was entirely her slave. It was only when I found, from common 
talk of the company at the Wells, and from narrowly watching one, 
who I once thought of asking the most sacred question a man can 
put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was to be a 
country gentleman’s wife; and that this fair creature was but a 
heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant 
to return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. ’Tis admira- 
tion such women want, not love that touches them ; and I can con- 
ceive, in her old age, no more wretched creature than this lady will 
be, when her beauty hath deserted her, when her admirers have left 
her, and she hath neither friendship nor religion to console her. 

“ Business calling me to London, I went to St. James’s Church 
last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. 
Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing, 
and absurd ; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner 
so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not 


316 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very 
bright they are) still staring at me. I fell in with her afterwards 
at Court, and at the play-house; and here nothing would satisfy 
her but she must elbow through the crowd and speak to me, and 
invite me to the assembly, which she holds at her house, not very 
far from Ch-r-ng Cr-ss. 

“ Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my 
promise ; and found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen 
of card-tables, and a crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best 
bow I could, and advanced towards her; and saw by a peculiar 
puzzled look in her face, though she tried to hide her perplexity, 
that she had forgotten even my name. 

“ Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed 
aright. She turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the ‘ 
spelling of names and words ; and I replied with as ridiculous 
fulsome compliments as I could pay her : indeed, one in which I 
compared her to an angel visiting the sick wells, went a little too 
far; nor should I have employed it, but that the allusion came ^ 
from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both had heard, \ 
and I was pressed to answer her. 

“Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting I 
me, and asked how I spelt my name '? ‘ Madam,’ says I, turning 

on my heel, ‘I spell it with a y.’ And so I left her, wondering / 
at the light-heartedness of the town-people, who forget and make j 
friends so easily, and resolved to look elsewhere for a partner for 
your constant reader. ^ Cymon Wyldoats.” 

“You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is 
no such letter as hupsilon. But if the lady, whom I have called 
Saccharissa, wonders that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she 
is hereby respectfully informed the reason ?/.” 

The above is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound 
the meaning. Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, Maid of 
Honour to her Majesty. She had told Mr. Esmond this little 
story of having met a gentleman somewhere, and forgetting his 
name, when the gentleman, with no such malicious intentions as 
those of “ Cymon ” in the above fable, made the answer simply as 
above; and we all laughed to think how little Mistress Jocasta- 
Beatrix had profited by her artifice and precautions. 

As for Cymon he was intended to represent yours and her very 
humble servant, the writer of the apologue and of this story, which 
we had printed on a Spectator ..paper at Mr. Steele’s office, exactly 
as those famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the 


THE OLD SUBJECT Sl7 

table at breakfast in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, 
who had plenty of wit, could not live without her Spectator' to her 
tea ; and this sham Spectator was intended to convey to the young 
woman that she herself was a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentle- 
man of honour and resolution, seeing all her faults, and determined 
to break the chains once and for ever. 

For though enough hath been said about this love business 
already — enough, at least, to prove to the writer’s heirs what a 
silly fond fool their old grandfather was, who would like them to 
consider him as a very wise old gentleman ; yet not near all has 
been told concerning this matter, which, if it were allowed to take 
in Esmond’s journal the space it occupied in his time, would weary 
his kinsmen and women of a hundred years’ time beyond all endur- 
ance ; and form such a diary of folly and drivelling, raptures and 
rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would like to leave behind him. 

The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged 
him ; whether she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on 
another ; worldly and ambitious as he knew her to be ; hard and 
careless, as she seemed to grow with her Court life, and a hundred 
admirers that came to her and left her ; Esmond, do what he would, 
never could get Beatrix out of his mind ; thought of her constantly 
at home or away. If he read his name in a Gazette, or escaped the 
shot of a cannon-ball or a greater danger in the campaign, as has 
happened to him more than once, the instant thought after the 
honour achieved or the danger avoided, was, “What will she say 
of it?” “Will this distinction or the idea of this peril elate her 
or touch her, so as to be better inclined towards me % ” He could 
no more help this passionate fidelity of temper than he could help 
the eyes he saw with — one or the other seemed a part of his nature ; 
and knowing every one of her faults as well as the keenest of her 
detractors, and the folly of an attachment to such a woman, of 
which the fruition could never bring him happiness for above a 
week, there was yet a charm about this Circe from which the poor 
deluded gentleman could not free himself ; and for a much longer 
period than Ulysses (another middle-aged officer, who had travelled 
much, and been in the foreign wars), Esmond felt himself enthralled 
and besotted by the wiles of this enchantress. Quit her ! He 
could no more quit her, as the Cymon of this story was made to 
quit his false one, than he could lose his consciousness of yesterday. 
She had but to raise her finger, and he would come back from ever 
so far; she had but to say I have discarded such and such an 
adorer, and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to come and 
rbder about her mother’s house, willing to be put on the ranks of 
suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he 


S18 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


were like Ulysses in his folly, at least she was in so far like Penelope 
that she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night 
after night the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry 
with which she was wont to allure and entertain them. 

Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about 
the Court, where the beautiful Maid of Honour was the light about 
which a thousand beaux came and fluttered ; where she was sure to 
have a ring of admirers round her, crowding to listen to her repartees 
as much as to admire her beauty ; and where she spoke and listened 
to much free talk, such as one never would have thought the lips or 
ears of Rachel Castlewood’s daughter would have uttered or heard. 
When in waiting at Windsor or Hampton, the Court ladies and 
gentlemen would be making riding parties together; Mrs. Beatrix 
in a horseman’s coat and hat, the foremost after the staghounds and 
over the park fences, a crowd of young fellows at her heels. If the 
English country ladies at this time were the most pure and modest 
of any ladies in the world — the English town and Court ladies per- 
mitted themselves words and behaviour that were neither modest 
nor pure ; and claimed, some of them, a freedom which those who 
love that sex most would never wish to grant them. The gentlemen 
of my family that follow after me (for I don’t encoimage the ladies 
to pursue any such studies) may read in the works of Mr. Congreve, 
and Dr. Swift and others, what was the conversation and what the 
habits of our time. 

The most beautiful woman in England in 1712, when Esmond 
returned to this country, a lady of high birth, and though of no 
fortune to be sure, with a thousand fascinations of wit and manners, 
Beatrix Esmond was now six-and-twenty years old, and Beatrix 
Esmond still. Of her hundred adorers she had not chosen one for 
a husband ; and those who had asked had been jilted by her ; and 
more still had left her. A succession of near ten years’ crops of 
beauties had come up since her time, and had been reaped by 
proper hushandmm, if we may make an agricultural simile, and had 
been housed comfortably long ago. Her own contemporaries were 
sober mothers by this time ; girls with not a tithe of her charms, 
or her wit, having made good matches, and now claiming precedence 
over the spinster who but lately had derided and outshone them. 
The young beauties were beginning to look down on Beatrix as an 
old maid, and sneer, and call her one of Charles the Second’s ladies, 
and ask whether her portrait was not in the Hampton Court Gallery ? 
But still she reigned, at least in one man’s opinion, superior over 
all the little misses that were the toasts of the young lads ; and in 
Esmond’s eyes was ever perfectly lovely and young. 

Who knows how many were nearly made happy by possessing 


ASHBURNHAM MARRIES ELSEWHERE 319 

lier, or, rather, how many were fortunate in escaping this siren? 
’Tis a marvel to think that her mother was the purest and simplest 
woman in the whole world, and that this girl should have been 
born from her. I am inclined to fancy, my mistress, who never 
said a harsh word to her children (and but twice or thrice only to 
one person), must have been too fond and pressing with the maternal 
authority ; for her son and her daughter both revolted early ; nor 
after their first flight from the nest could they ever be brought back 
quite to the fond mother’s bosom. Lady Castlewood, and perhaps 
it was as well, knew little of her daughter’s life and real thoughts. 
How was she to apprehend what passes in Queen’s ante-chambers 
and at Court tables ? Mrs. Beatrix asserted her own authority so 
resolutely that her mother quickly gave in. The Maid of Honour 
had her own equipage ; went from home and came back at her own 
will ; her mother was alike powerless to resist her or to lead her, or 
to command or to persuade her. 

She had been engaged once, twice, thrice, to be married, 
Esmond believed. When he quitted home, it hath been said, she 
was promised to my Lord Ashburnham, and now, on his return, 
behold his Lordship was just married to Lady Mary Butler, the 
Duke of Ormonde’s daughter, and his fine houses, and twelve thou- 
sand a year of fortune, for which Miss Beatrix had rather coveted 
him, were out of her power. To her Esmond could say nothing in 
regard to the breaking of this match ; and, asking his mistress 
about it, all Lady Castlewood answered was : “ Do not speak to 
me about it, Harry. I cannot tell you how or why they parted, 
and I feai’ to inquire. I have told you before, that with all her 
kindness, and wit, and generosity, and that sort of splendour of 
nature she has, I can say but little good of poor Beatrix, and look 
with dread at the marriage she will form. Her mind is fixed on 
ambition only, and making a great figure ; and, this achieved, she 
will tire of it as she does of everything. Heaven help her husband, 
whoever he shall be ! My Lord Ashburnham was a most excellent 
young man, gentle and yet manly, of very good parts, so they told 
me, and as my little conversation would enable me to judge : and 
a kind temper — kind and enduring I’m sure he must have been, 
from all that he had to endure. But he quitted her at last, from 
some crowning piece of caprice or tyranny of hers ; and now lie 
has married a young woman that will make him a thousand times 
happier than my poor girl ever could.” 

The rupture, whatever its cause was (I heard the scandal, but 
indeed shall not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the 
trumpery coffee-house story), caused a good deal of low talk ; and 
Mr. Esmond was present at my Lord’s appearance at the Birthday 


320 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

witli liis bride, over whom the revenge that Beatrix took was to look 
so imperial and lovely that the modest downcast young lady could 
not appear beside her, and Lord Ashburnham, who had his reasons 
for wishing to avoid her, slunk away quite shamefaced, and very 
early. This time his Grace the Duke of Hamilton, whom Esmond 
had seen about her before, was constant at Miss Beatrix’s side : he 
was one of the most splendid gentlemen of Europe, accomplished by 
books, by travel, by long command of the best company, distinguished 
as a statesman, having been ambassador in King William’s time, 
and a noble speaker in the Scots’ Parliament, where he had led the 
party that was against the Union, and though now five or six-and- 
forty years of age, a gentleman so high in stature, accomplished in 
wit, and favoured in person, that he might pretend to the hand of 
any Princess in Europe. 

“ Should you like the Duke for a cousin ” says Mr. Secretary 
St. John, whispering to Colonel Esmond in French ; “ it appears 
that the widower consoles himself.” 

But to return to our little Spectator paper and the conversation 
which grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite bit (as the 
phrase of that day was) and did not “smoke” the authorship of 
the story; indeed Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he 
could Mr. Steele’s manner (as for the other author of the Spectator^ 
his prose style I think is altogether inimitable) ; and Dick, who was 
the idlest and best-natured of men, would have let the piece pass 
into his journal and go to posterity as one of his own lucubrations, 
but that Esmond did not care to have a lady’s name whom he loved 
sent forth to the world in a light so unfavourable. Beatrix pished 
and psha’d over the paper ; Colonel Esmond watching with no little 
interest her countenance as she read it. 

“ How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes ! ” cries Miss 
Beatrix. “ Epsom and Tunbridge ! Will he never have done with 
Epsom and Tunbridge, and with beaux at churcli, and Jocastas and 
Lindamiras^ Why does he not call women Nelly and Betty, as 
their godfathers and godmothers did for them in their baptism h ” 

“ Beatrix, Beatrix ! ” says her mother, “ speak gravely of grave 
things.” 

“ Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from heaven, I 
believe,” says Beatrix, with a laugh, “ and was brought down by a 
bishop from a mountain. Oh, how I used to break my heart over 
it ! Besides, I had a Popish godmother, mamma ; why did you 
give me one 1 ” 

“I gave you the Queen’s name,” says her mother, blushing. 
“ And a very pretty name it is,” said somebody else. 

Beatrix went on reading : “ Spell my name with a y — why, you 


BEATRIX AND HER MOTHER 


321 


wretch,” says she, turning round to Colonel Esmond, “ you have 
been telling my story to Mr. Steele — or stop — you have written the 
paper yourself to turn me into ridicule. For shame, sir ! ” 

Poor Mr. Esmond felt rather frightened, and told a truth, which 
was nevertheless an entire falsehood. “Upon my honour,” says he, 
“ I have not even read the Spectator of this morning.” Nor had 
he, for that was not the Spectator^ hut a sham newspaper put 
in its place. 

She went on reading ; her face rather flushed as she read. 
“No,” she says, “I think you couldn’t have written it. I think 
it must have been Mr. Steele when he was drunk — and afraid of 
his horrid vulgar wife. Whenever I see an enormous compliment 
to a woman, and some outrageous panegyric about female virtue, I 
always feel sure that the Captain and his better half have fallen 
out over-night, and that he has been brought home tipsy, or has 
been found out in ” 

“ Beatrix ! ” cries the Lady Castlewood. 

“Well, mamma ! Do not cry out before you are hurt. I am 
not going to say anything wrong. I won’t give you more annoyance 
than I can help, you pretty, kind mamma. Yes, and your little 
Trix is a naughty little Trix, and she leaves undone those things 
which she ought to have done, and does those things which she 

ought not to have done, and there’s well now — I won’t go on. 

Yes, I will, unless you kiss me.” And with this the young lady 
lays aside her x>aper, and runs up to her mother and performs a 
variety of embraces with her Ladyship, saying as plain as eyes 
could speak to Mr. Esmond, “ There, sir ; would not you like to 
play the very same pleasant game ? ” 

“ Indeed, madam, I would,” says he. 

“Would what?” asked Miss Beatrix. 

“ What you meant when you looked at me in that provoking 
way,” answers Esmond. 

“ What a confessor ! ” cries Beatrix, with a laugh. 

“What is it Henry would like, my dear?” asks her mother, 
the kind soul, who was always thinking what we would like, and 
how she could please us. 

The girl runs up to her. “ 0 you silly, kind mamma,” she 
says, kissing her again, “ that’s what Harry would like ; ” and she 
broke out into a great joyful laugh ; and Lady Castlewood blushed 
as bashful as a maid of sixteen. 

“Look at her, Harry,” whispers Beatrix, running up, and 
speaking in her sweet low tones. “Doesn’t the blush become her? 
Isn’t she pretty ? She looks younger than I am, and I am sure she 
is a hundred thousand million times better.” 

7 


x 


322 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Esniond’s kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away 
with her. 

“ If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that,” continues 
Beatrix, with her laugh, “what wouldn’t we do to ju'eserve ’enil 
We’d clip their stalks and put ’em in salt and water. But those 
dowers don’t bloom at Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry.” She 
paused for a minute, and the smile fading away from her April face, 
gave place to a menacing shower of tears. “ Oh, how good she is, 
Harry ! ” Beatrix went on to say. “ Oh, what a saint she is ! Her 
goodness frightens me. I’m not fit to live with her. I sliould be 
better, I think, if she were not so perfect. She has had a great 
sorrow in her life, and a great secret ; and repented of it. It could 
not have been my father’s death. Slie talks freely about that ; nor 
could she have loved him very much — though who knows what we 
women do love, and why.” 

“ What, and why, indeed ! ” says Mr. Esmond. 

“No one knows,” Beatrix went on, without noticing this inter- 
ruption except by a look, “what my mother’s life is. She hath 
been at early prayer this morning : she passes hours in her closet ; 
if you were to follow her thither, you would find her at prayers 
now. She tends the poor of the place — the horrid dirty poor ! 
She sits through the curate’s sermons — oh, those dreary sermons ! 
And you see, on a beau dire ; but good as they are, people like her 
are not fit to commune with us of the world. There is always, as 
it were, a third person present, even when I and my mother are 
alone. She can’t be frank with me quite ; who is always thinking 
of the next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that’s in 
company. 0 Harry, I’m jealous of that guardian angel ! ” here 
broke out Mistress Beatrix. “ It’s horrid, I know; but my mother’s 
life is all for heaven, and mine— all for earth. We can never be 
friends quite ; and then she cares more for Frank’s little finger than 
she does for me — I know she does : and she loves you, sir, a great 
deal too much ; and I hate you for it. I would liave had her all to 
myself ; but she wouldn’t. In my childhood, it was my father she 
loved — (oh, how could she 1 I remember him kind and handsome, 
but so stupid, and not being able to speak after drinking wine). 
And then it was Frank ; and now, it is heaven and the clergyman. 
How I would have loved her ! From a child I used to be in a rage 
that she loved anybody but me ; but she loved you all better — all, 
I know she did. An(l now, she talks of the blessed consolation of 
religion. Dear soul ! she thinks she is happier for believing, as 
she must, that we are all of us wicked and miserable sinners ; and 
this world is only a pied-a-terre for the good, where they stay for 
a night, as we do, coming from Walcote, at that great, dreary, 


A LAME LOVER 


323 


uncomfortable Hounslow Inn, in those horrid beds — oh, do you 
remember those horrid beds'! — and the chariot comes and fetches 
them to heaven the next morning.” 

“ Hush, Beatrix ! ” says Mr. Esmond. 

“ Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your 
grave airs and your glum face. We are all hypocrites. Oh dear 
me! We are all alone, alone, alone,” says poor Beatrix, her fair 
breast heaving with a sigh. 

“ It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear,” says 
Mr. Esmond. “You are not so worldly as you think yourself, 
Beatrix, and better than we believe you. The good we have in us 
we doubt of ; and the happiness that’s to our hand we throw away. 
You bend your ambition on a great marriage and establishment — 
and why 'i You’ll tire of them when you win them ; and be no 
happier with a coronet on your coach ” 

“ Than riding pillion with Lubin to market,” says Beatrix. 
“ Thank you, Lubin I ” 

“ I’m a dismal shepherd, to be sure,” answers Esmond, with a 
blush ; “ and require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, 
and make me water-gruel. Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. 
He took me out of the fire upon his shoulders, and nursed me 
through my illness as love will scarce ever do. Only good wages, 
and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of my portmanteau. 
How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for Rachel ? ” 

“For mamma?” says Beatrix. “It is mamma your honour 
wants, and that I should have the happiness of calling you papa ? ” 

Esmond blushed again. “ I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd 
courted five thousand years ago ; when shepherds were longer 
lived than now. And my meaning was, that since I saw you first 
after our separation — a child you were then ...” 

“ And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, 
sir . . . ” 

“You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and 
such as you were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputa- 
tion I have won, it was that you might be pleased with it : and 
indeed, it is not much ; and I think a hundred fools in the army 
have got and deserved quite as much. Was there something in 
the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all gloomy, and 
dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof? We were all 
so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our 
separate schemes, each as we sat round tire table.” 

“ Dear, dreary old place I ” cries Beatrix. “ Mamma hath 
never had the heart to go back thither since we left it, when — 
never mind how many years ago.” And she filing back her curls. 


324 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and looked over her fair shoulder at the mirror superbly, as if she 
said, “ Time, I defy you.” 

“ Yes,” says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divin- 
ing many of her thoughts. “You can aftbrd to look in the glass 
still ; and only be pleased by the truth it tells you. As for me, 
do you know what my scheme is? I think of asking Frank to 
give me the Virginian estate King Charles gave our grandfather.” 
(She gave a superb curtsey, as much as to say, “Our grand- 
father, indeed ! Thank you, Mr. Bastard.”) “ Yes, I know you 
are thinking of my bar sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get 
over it in this country ; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king’s 
arms, when ’tis a highly honourable coat ; and I am thinking of 
retiring into the plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the 
woods, and perhaps, if I want company, suiting myself with a 
squaw. We will send your Ladyship furs over for the winter ; and, 
when you are old, we will provide you with tobacco. I am not 
quite clever enough, or not rogue enough — I know not which — for 
the Old World. I may make a place for myself in the New, which 
is not so full ; and found a family there. When you are a mother 
yourself, and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over fi’om the 
l)lantation some day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half 
Mohock, and you will be kind to him for his father’s sake, who 
was, after all, your kinsman ; and whom you loved a little.” 

“ What folly you are talking, Harry ! ” says Miss Beatrix, 
looking with her great eyes. 

“ ’Tis sober earnest,” says Esmond. And, indeed, the scheme 
had been dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, 
and especially since his return home, when he found how hopeless, 
and even degrading to himself, his passion was. “No,” says he, 
then : “I have tried half-a-dozen times now. I can bear being 
away from you well enough ; but being with you is intolerable ” 
(another low curtsey on Mistress Beatrix’s part), “ and I will go. 
I have enough to buy axes and guns for my men, and beads and 
blankets for the savages ; and I’ll go and live amongst them.” 

“ jl/on she says, quite kindly, and taking Esmond’s hand, 

with an air of great compassion, “you can’t think that in our 
position anything more than our present friendship is possible. You 
are our elder brother — as such we view you, pitying your misfor- 
tune, not rebuking you with it. Why, you are old enough and 
grave enough to be our father. I always thought you a hundred 
years old, Harry, with your solemn face and grave air. I feel as 
a sister to you, and can no more. Isn’t that enough, sir ? ” And 
she put her face quite close to his — who knows with what intention ? 

“ It’s too much,” says Esmond, turning away. “ I can’t bear 


DUKE HAMILTON 


325 


this life, and shall leave it. I shall stay, I think, to see yon 
married, and then freight a ship, and call it the Beatrix, and bid 
you all ” 

Here the servant, flinging the door open, announced his Grace 
the Duke of Hamilton, and Esmond started back with something 
like an imprecation on his lips, as the nobleman entered, looking 
splendid in his star and green riband. He gave Mr. Esmond just 
that gracious bow which he would have given to a lacquey who 
fetched him a chair or took his hat, and seated himself by Miss 
Beatrix, as the poor Colonel went out of the room with a hangdog 
look. 

Esmond’s mistress was in the lower room as he passed down- 
stairs. She often met him as he was coming away from Beatrix ; 
and she beckoned him into the apartment. 

“ Has she told you, Harry % ” Lady Castlewood said. 

“ She has been very frank — very,” says Esmond. 

“ But — but about what is going to happen 1” 

“ What is going to happen ? ” says he, his heart beating. 

“ His Grace the Duke of Hamilton has proposed to her,” says 
my Lady. “ He made his offer yesterday. They will marry as 
soon as his mourning is over; and you have heard his Grace is 
appointed Ambassador to Paris ; and the Ambassadress goes with 
him.” 


CHAPTER IV 


BEATRIXES NEW SUITOR 


HE gentleman whom Beatrix had selected was, to be sure, 



twenty years older than the Colonel, with whom she 


^ quarrelled for being too old ; but this one was but a name- 
less adventurer, and the other the greatest Duke in Scotland, 
with pretensions even to a still higher title. My Lord Duke of 
Hamilton had, indeed, every merit belonging to a gentleman, and 
he had had the time to mature his accomplishments fully, being 
upwards of fifty years old when Madam Beatrix selected him for 
a bridegroom. Duke Hamilton, then Earl of Arran, had been 
educated at the famous Scottish University of Glasgow, and, coming 
to London, became a great favourite of Charles the Second, who 
made him a lord of his bedchamber, and afterwards appointed him 
ambassador to the French King, under whom the Earl served two 
campaigns as his Majesty’s aide-de-camp ; and he was absent on 
this service when King Charles died. 

King James continued my Lord’s promotion — made him Master 
of the Wardrobe and Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse ; and 
his Lordship adhered firmly to King James, being of the small 
company that never quitted that unfortunate monarch till his de- 
parture out of England; and then it was, in 1688 namely, that he 
made the friendship with Colonel Francis Esmond, that had always 
been, more or less, maintained in the two families. 

The Earl professed a great admiration for King William always, 
but never could give him his allegiance ; and was engaged in more 
than one of the plots in the late great King’s reign which always 
ended in the plotters’ discomfiture, and generally in their pardon, 
by the magnanimity of the King. Lord Arran was twice prisoner 
in the Tower during this reign, undauntedly saying, when offered 
his release, upon parole not to engage against King William, that 
he would not give his word, because “he was sure he could not 
keep it ” ; but, nevertheless, he was both times discharged without 
any trial ; and the King bore this noble enemy so little malice, 
that when his mother, the Duchess of Hamilton, of her own right, 
resigned her claim on her husbamFs death, the Earl was, by patent 


DUKE HAMILTON .327 

signed at Loo, 1690, created Duke of Hamilton, Marquis of Clydes- 
dale, and Earl of Arran, with i)recedency from the original creation. 
His Grace took the oaths and his seat in the Scottish parliament in 
1 / 00 : was famous there for his patriotism and eloquence, especially 
in the debates about the Union Bill, which Duke Hamilton opposed 
with all his strength, though he would not go the length of the 
Scottish gentry, who were for resisting it by force of arms. ’Twas 
said he withdrew his opposition all of a sudden, and in consequence 
of letters from the King at St. Germains, who entreated him on his 
allegiance not to thwart the Queen his sister in this measure ; and 
the Duke, being ahvays bent upon effecting the King’s return to his 
kingdom through a reconciliation between his Majesty and Queen 
Anne, and quite averse to his landing with arms and French troops, 
held aloof, and kept out of Scotland during the time when the 
Chevalier de St. George’s descent from Dunkirk was projected, 
passing his time in England in his great estate in Staffordshire. 

When the Whigs went out of office in 1710, the Queen began 
to show his Grace the very greatest marks of her favour. He was 
created Duke of Brandon and Baron of Dutton in England ; having 
the Thistle already originally bestowed on him by King James the 
Second, his Grace was now promoted to the honour of the Garter — 
a distinction so great and illustrious, that no subject hath ever 
borne them hitherto together. When this objection was made to 
her Majesty, she was pleased to say, “ Such a subject as the Duke 
of Hamilton has a pre-eminent claim to every mark of distinction 
which a crowned head can confer. I will henceforth wear both 
orders myself.” 

At the Chapter held at Windsor in October 1712, the Duke 
and other knights, including Lord- Treasurer, the new-created Earl 
of Oxford and Mortimer, were installed ; and a few days afterwards 
his Grace was appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to France, and 
his equipages, plate, and liveries commanded, of the most sumptuous 
kind, not only for his Excellency the Ambassador, but for her 
Excellency the Ambassadress, who was to accompany him. Her 
arms were already quartered on the coach panels, and her brother 
was to hasten over on the appointed day to give her away. 

His Lordship was a widower, having married, in 1698, Elizabeth, 
daughter of Digby Lord Gerard, by which marriage great estates 
came into the Hamilton family ; and out of these estates came, in 
part, that tragic quarrel which ended the Duke’s career. 

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress tliere’s no pang 
that is not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than 
the certainty ; and we make up our mind to the misfortune when 


328 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

’ti3 irremediable, part with tlie tormentor, and muml)le our erust on 
t’other side of the jaws. I think Colonel Esmond was relieved 
when a ducal coach and six came and whisked his charmer away 
out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As you have 
seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the 
end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine 
company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as 
a goddess : so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in 
the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not 
treat the divine Beatrix with special honours ; at least the saucy 
little beauty carried her head with a toss of supreme authority, 
and assumed a touch-me-not air, which all her friends very good- 
humouredly bowed to. 

An old army acquaintance of Colonel Esmond’s, honest Tom 
Trett, who had sold his company, married a wife, and turned 
merchant in the City, was dreadfully gloomy for a long time, though 
living in a fine house on the river, and carrying on a great trade to 
all appearance. At length Esmond saw his friend’s name in the 
Gazette as a bankrupt; and a week after this circumstance my 
bankrupt walks into Mr. Esmond’s lodging with a face perfectly 
radiant with good-humour, and as jolly and careless as when they 
had sailed from Southampton ten years before for Vigo. “This 
bankruptcy,” says Tom, “ has been hanging over my head these 
three years ; the thought hath prevented my sleeping, and I have 
looked at poor Polly’s head on t’other pillow, and then towards my 
razor on the table, and thought to put an end to myself, and so 
give my woes the slip. But now we are bankrupts : Tom Trett 
pays as many shillings in the pound as he can ; his wife has a little 
cottage at Fulham, and her fortune secured to herself. I am afraid 
neither of bailiff nor of creditor : and for the last six nights have slept 
easy.” So it was that when Fortune shook her wings and left him, 
honest Tom cuddled himself up in his ragged virtue, and fell asleep. 

Esmond did not tell his friend how much his story applied to 
Esmond too ; but he laughed at it, and used it ; and having fairly 
struck his docket in this love transaction, determined to put a 
cheerful face on his bankruptcy. Perhaps Beatrix was a little 
offended at his gaiety. “ Is this the way, sir, that you receive 
the announcement of your misfortune?” says she, “and do you 
come smiling before me as if you were glad to be rid of me ? ” 

Esmond would not be put off from his good-humour, but told 
her the story of Tom Trett and his bankruptcy. “ I have been 
liankering after the grapes on the wall,” says he, “and lost my 
temper because they were beyond my reach : was there any wonder ? 
They’re gone now, and another has them — a taller man than your 


BEATRIX AND I 329 

humble servant has won them.” And the Colonel made his cousin 
a low bow 

“ A taller man, Cousin Esmond ! ” says she. “ A man of spirit 
would have scaled the wall, sir, and seized them ! A man of courage 
would have fought for ’em, not gaped for ’em.” 

“A Duke has but to gape and they drop into his mouth,” says 
Esmond, with another low bow. 

“Yes, sir,” says she, “ a Duke is a taller man than you. And 
why should I not be grateful to one such as his Grace, who gives 
me his heart and his great name 1 It is a great gift he honours 
me with ; I know ’tis a bargain between us ; and I accept it, and 
will do my utmost to perform my part of it. ’Tis no question of 
sighing and philandering between a nobleman of his Grace’s age, 
and a girl who hath little of that softness in her nature. Why 
should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond ; and if it 
be no sin in a man to covet honour, why should a woman too not 
desire it ? Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you 
had not been down on your knees, and so humble, you might have 
fared better with me'? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be 
won by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful faces. All the time 
you are worshipping and singing hymns to me, I know very well 
I am no goddess, and grow weary of the incense. So would you 
have been weary of the goddess too — when she w’as called Mrs. 
Esmond, and got out of humour because she had not pin-money 
enough, and was forced to go about in an old gown. Eh ! cousin, 
a goddess in a mob-cap, that has to make her husband’s gruel, 
ceases to be divine — I am sure of it. I should have been sulky 
and scolded; and of all the proud wretches in the world Mr. 
Esmond is the proudest, let me tell him that. You never fall 
into a passion ; but you never forgive, I think. Had you been a 
great man, you might have been good-humoured ; but being nobody, 
sir, you are too great a man for me ; and I’m afraid of you, cousin 
— there ! and I won’t worship you, and you’ll never be happy except 
with a woman who will. Why, after I belonged to you, and after 
one of my tantrums, you would have put the pillow over my head 
some night, and smothered me, as the black man does the woman 
in the play that you’re so fond of. What’s the creature’s name'? — 
Desdemona. You would, you little black-dyed Othello ! ” 

“ I think I should, Beatrix,” says the Colonel. 

“ And I want no such ending. I intend to live to be a hundred, 
and to go to ten thousand routs and balls, and to play cards every 
night of my life till the year eighteen hundred. And I like to be 
the first of my company, sir ; and I like flattery and compliments, 
and you give me none ; and I like to be made to laugh, sir, and 


SSO THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

who’s to laugh at i/ou7' dismal face, I should like to know ? and I 
like a coach-and-six or a coach-and-eight ; and I like diamonds, and 
a new gown every week ; and i)eoi)le to say, ‘ That’s the Duchess. 
How well her Grace looks ! Make way for Madame I’Ambassadrice 
d’Angleterre. Call her Excellency’s people’ — that’s what I like. 
And as for you, you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, 
and to sit at your feet, and cry, ‘ 0 caro ! 0 bravo ! ’ whilst you 
read your Shakspeares and Miltons and stuff. Mamma would 
have been the wife for you, had you been a little older, though 
you look ten years older than she does — you do, you glum-faced, 
blue-bearded little old man ! You might have sat, like Darby 
and Joan, and flattered each other ; and billed and cooed like a 
pair of old pigeons on a perch. I want my wings and to use them, 
sir.” And she spread out her beautiful arms, as if indeed she could 
fly off like the pretty “ Gawrie,” whom the man in the story was 
enamoured of. 

“ And what will your Peter Wilkins say to your flight ? ” says 
Esmond, who never admired this fliir creature more than when she 
rebelled and laughed at him. 

“A duchess knows her place,” says she, with a laugh. “ Why, 
I have a son already made for me, and thirty years old (my Lord 
Arran), and four daughters. How they will scold, and what a 
rage they will be in, when I come to take the head of the table ! 
But I give them only a month to be angry ; at the end of that 
time they shall love me every one, and so shall -Lord Arran, and so 
shall all his Grace’s Scots vassals and followers in the Highlands. 
I’m bent on it ; and when I take a thing in my head, ’tis done. 
His Grace is the greatest gentleman in Europe, and I’ll try and make 
him happy ; and, when the King comes back, you may count on my 
protection. Cousin Esmond — for come back the King will and shall ; 
and I’ll bring him back from Versailles, if he comes under my hoop.” 

“I hope the world will make you happy, Beatrix,” says 
Esmond, with a sigh. “You’ll be Beatrix till you are my Lady 
Duchess — will you not ? I shall then make your Grace my very 
lowest bow.” 

“ None of these sighs and this satire, cousin,” she says. “ I 
take his Grace’s great bounty thankfully — yes, thankfully ; and will 
wear his honours becomingly. I do not say he hath touched my 
heart ; but he has my gratitude, obedience, admiration — I have 
told him that, and no more; and with that his noble heart is 
content. I have told him all — even the story of that poor creature 
that I was engaged to — and that I could not love ; and I gladly 
gave his word back to him, and jumped for joy to get back my own. 
I am twenty-five years old.” 


THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 


331 


“ Twenty-six, iny dear,” says Esmond. 

“ Twenty-five, sir — I choose to be twenty-five ; and in eiglit 
years no man hath ever touched my heart. Yes — you did once, 
for a little, Harry, when you came back after Lille, and engaging 
with that murderer Mohun, and saving Frank’s life. I thought 
I could like you ; and mamma begged me hard, on her knees, and 
I did — for a day. But the old chill came over me, Henry, and the 
old fear of you and your melancholy ; and I was glad when you 
went away, and engaged with my Lord Ashburnham, that I might 
hear no more of you, that’s the truth. You are too good for me, 
somehow. I could not make you happy, and should break my 
heart in trying, and not being able to love you. But if you had 
asked me when we gave you the sword, you might have had me, 
sir, and we both should have been miserable by this time. I talked 
with that silly lord all night just to vex you and mamma, and I 
succeeded, didn’t I ? How frankly we can talk of these things ! 
It seems a thousand years ago : and, though we are here sitting in 
the same room, there is a great wall between us. My dear, kind, 
faithful, gloomy old cousin ! I can like now, and admire you too, 
sir, and say that you are brave, and very kind, and very true, and 
a fine gentleman for all — for all your little mishap at your birth,” 
says she, wagging her arch head. 

“And now, sir,” says she, with a curtsey, “we must have no 
more talk except when mamma is by, or his Grace is with us ; for 
he does not half like you, cousin, and is jealous as the black man 
in your favourite play.” 

Though the very kindness of the words stabbed Mr. Esmond 
with the keenest pang, he did not show his sense of the w'ound 
by any look of his (as Beatrix, indeed, afterwards owned to him), 
but said, with a perfect command of himself and an easy smile, 
“ The interview must not end yet, my dear, until I have had my last 
word. Stay, here comes your mother” (indeed she came in here 
with her sweet anxious face, and Esmond going up kissed her hand 
respectfully). “ My dear lady may hear, too, the last words, which 
are no secrets, and are only a parting benediction accompanying a 
I)resent for your marriage from an old gentleman your guardian ; 
for I feel as if I was the guardian of all the family, and an old 
fellow that is fit to be the grandfather of you all ; and in this 
character let me make my Lady Duchess her wedding present. 
They are the diamonds my father’s widow left me. I had thought 
Beatrix might have had them a year ago ; but they are good 
enough for a Duchess, though not bright enough for the handsomest 
woman in the world.” And he took the case out of his pocket in 
which the jewels were, and presented them to his (;ousin. 


SS2 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

She gave a cry of delight, for the stones were indeed very liand- 
some, and of great value ; and the next niinute the necklace was 
where Belinda’s cross is in Mr. Pope’s admirable poem, and 
glittering on the whitest and most perfectly-shaped neck in all 
England. 

The girl’s delight at receiving these trinkets was so great, that 
after rushing to the looking-glass and examining the effect they 
produced upon that fair neck which they surrounded, Beatrix was 
running back with her arms extended, and was perhaps for paying 
her cousin with a price that he would have liked no doubt to 
receive from those beautiful rosy lips of hers, but at this moment the 
door opened, and his Grace the bridegroom elect was announced. 

He looked very black upon Mr. Esmond, to whom he made a 
very low bow indeed, and kissed the hand of each lady in his most 
ceremonious manner. He had eome in his ehair from the palaee 
hard by, and wore his two stars of the Garter and the Thistle. 

“Look, my Lord Duke,” says Mistress Beatrix, advancing to 
him, and showing the diamonds on her breast. 

“Diamonds,” says his Grace. “Hm ! they seem pretty.” 

“ They are a present on my marriage,” says Beatrix. 

“ From her Majesty 1 ” asks the Duke. “ The Queen is very 
good.” 

“ From my Cousin Henry — from our Cousin Henry,” ery both 
the ladies in a breath. 

“ I have not the honour of knowing the gentleman. I thought 
that my Lord Castlewood had no brother : and that on your Lady- 
ship’s side there were no nephews.” 

“From our cousin. Colonel Henry Esmond, my Lord,” says 
Beatrix, taking the Colonel’s hand very bravely, “who was left 
guardian to us by our father, and who has a hundred times shown 
his love and friendship for our family.” 

“ The Duchess of Hamilton receives no diamonds but from her 
husband, madam,” says the Duke; “may I pray you to restore 
these to Mr. Esmond 'I ’ 

“ Beatrix Esmond may receive a present from our kinsman and 
benefactor, my Lord Duke,” says Lady Castlewood, with an air 
of great dignity. “ She is my daughter yet : and if her mother 
sanctions the gift — no one else hath the right to question it.” 

“ Kinsman and benefactor ! ” says the Duke. “ I know of no 
kinsman : and I do not choose that my wife should have for bene- 
factor a 

“ My Lord ! ” says Colonel Esmond. 

“ I am not here to bandy words,” says his Grace ; “ frankly I 
tell you that your visits to this house are too frequent, and that I 










i 


EXPLANATION 333 

choose no presents for the Duchess of Hamilton from gentlemen that 
bear a name they have no right to.” 

“ My Lord ! ” breaks out Lady Castlewood, “ Mr. Esmond hath 
the best right to that name of any man in the world : and ’tis as 
old and as honourable as your Grace’s.” 

My Lord Duke smiled, and looked as if Lady Castlewood was 
mad, that was so talking to him. 

“ If I called him benefactor,” said my mistress, “ it is because 
he has been so to us — yes, the noblest, the truest, the bravest, the 
dearest of benefactors. He would have saved my husband’s life 
from Mohun’s sword. He did save my boy’s, and defended him 
from that villain. Are those no benefits ? ” 

“I ask Colonel Esmond’s pardon,” says his Grace, if possible 
more haughty than before. “ I would say not a word that should 
give him offence, and thank him for his kindness to your Ladyship’s 
family. My Lord Mohun and I are connected, you know, by 
marriage — though neither by blood nor friendship; but I must 
repeat what I said, that my wife can receive no presents from 
Colonel Esmond.” 

“ My daughter may receive presents from the Head of our House; 
my daughter may thankfully take kindness from her father’s, her 
mother’s, her brother’s dearest friend ; and be grateful for one more 
benefit besides the thousand we owe him,” cries Lady Castlewood. 
“ What is a string of diamond stones compared to that affection he 
hath given us— our dearest preserver and benefactor? We owe 
him not only Frank’s life, but our all — yes, our all,” says my 
mistress, with a heightened colour and a trembling voice. “The 
title we bear is his, if he would claim it. ’Tis we who have no 
right to our name : not he that’s too great for it. He sacrificed 
his name at my dying lord’s bedside — sacrificed it to my orphan 
children ; gave up rank and honour because he loved us so nobly. 
His father was Viscount of Castlewood and Marquis of Esmond 
before him ; and he is his father’s lawful son and true heir, and we 
;ire the recipients of his bounty, and he the chief of a house that’s 
as old as your own. And if he is content to forego his name that 
my child may bear it, we love him and honour him and bless him 
under whatever name he bears ” — and here the fond and affectionate 
creature would have knelt to Esmond again, but that he prevented 
her ; and Beatrix, running up to her with a pale face and a cry of 
alarm, embraced her and said, “ Mother, what is this ? ” 

“ ’Tis a family secret, my Lord Duke,” says Colonel Esmond : 
“ poor Beatrix knew nothing of it ; nor did my Lady till a year 
ago. And I have as good a right to resign my title as your Grace’s 
mother to abdicate hers to you.” 


334 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ I should have told everything to the Duke of Hamilton,” said 
my mistress, “ had his Grace applied to me for my daughter’s hand, 
and not to Beatrix. I should have spoken with you this very day 
in private, my Lord, had not your words brought about this sudden 
explanation — and now ’tis fit Beatrix should hear it ; and know, as 
I would have all the world know, what we owe to our kinsman 
and patron.” 

And then, in her touching way, and having hold of her daughter’s 
hand, and speaking to her rather than my Lord Duke, Lady Castle- 
wood told the story which you know already — lauding up to the 
skies her kinsman’s behaviour. On his side Mr. Esmond explained 
the reasons that seemed quite sufficiently cogent with him, why the 
succession in the family, as at present it stood, should not be dis- 
turbed ; and he should remain as he was, Colonel Esmond. 

“And Marquis of Esmond, my Lord,” says his Grace, with a 
low bow. “Permit me to ask your Lordship’s pardon for words 
that were uttered in ignorance; and to beg for the favour of your 
friendship. To be allied to you, sir, must be an honour under 
whatever name you are known ” (so his Grace was pleased to say) ; 
“and in return for the splendid present you make my wife, your 
kinswoman, I hope you will please to command any service that 
James Douglas can perform. I shall never be easy until I repay 
you a part of my obligations at least; and ere very long, and with 
the mission her Majesty hath given me,” says the Duke, “that 
may perhaps be in my power. I shall esteem it as a favour, my 
Lord, if Colonel Esmond will give away the bride.” 

“ And if he will take the usual payment in advance, he is 
welcome,” says Beatrix, stepping up to him ; and, as Esmond 
kissed her, she whispered, “Oh, why didn’t I know you before?” 

My Lord Duke was as hot as a flame at this salute, but said 
never a word : Beatrix made him a proud curtsey, and the two 
ladies quitted the room together. 

“When does your Excellency go for Paris?” asks Colonel 
Esmond. 

“As soon after the ceremony as may be,” his Grace answered. 
“ ’Tis fixed for the first of December : it cannot be sooner. The 
equipage will not be ready till then. The Queen intends the em- 
bassy should be very grand— and I have law business to settle. 
That ill-omened Mohun has come, or is coming, to London again : 
we are in a lawsuit about my late Lord Gerard’s property ; and he 
hath sent to me to meet him.” 


CHAPTER V 


MOHUN APPEARS FOR THE LAST TIME IN THIS HISTORY 

B esides my Lord Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who for 
family reasons had kindly promised his protection and patron- 
age to Colonel Esmond, he had other great friends in power 
now, both able and willing to assist him, and he might, with such 
allies, look forward to as fortunate advancement in civil life at home 
as he had got rapid promotion abroad. His Grace was magnanimous 
enough to offer to take Mr. Esmond as secretary on his Paris 
embassy, but no doubt he intended that proposal should be rejected ; 
at any rate, Esmond could not bear the thoughts of attending his 
mistress farther than the church-door after her marriage, and so 
declined that offer which his generous rival made him. 

Other gentlemen in power were liberal at least of compliments 
and promises to Colonel Esmond. Mr. Harley, now become my 
Lord Oxford and Mortimer, and installed Knight of the Garter on 
the same day as his Grace of Hamilton had received the same 
honour, sent to the Colonel to say that a seat in Parliament should 
be at his disposal presently, and Mr. St. John held out many 
flattering hopes of advancement to the Colonel when he should 
enter the House. Esmond’s friends were all successful, and the 
most successful and triumphant of all was his dear old commander. 
General Webb, who was now appointed Lieutenant-General of the 
Land Forces, and received with particular honour by the Ministry, 
by the Queen, and the people out of doors, who huzza’d the brave 
chief when they used to see him in his chariot going to the House 
or to the Drawing-room, or hobbling on foot to his coach from St. 
Stephen’s upon his glorious old crutch and stick, and cheered him 
as loud as they had ever done Marlborough. 

That great Duke was utterly disgraced ; and honest old Webb 
dated all his Grace’s misfortunes from Wynendael, and vowed that 
Fate served the traitor right. Duchess Sarah had also gone to 
ruin ; she had been forced to give up her keys, and her places, and 
her pensions “ Ah, ah ! ” says Webb, “ she would have locked up 
three millions of French crowns with her keys had I but been 
knocked on the head, but I stopped that convoy at Wynendael,” 


336 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Our enemy Cardonnel was turned out of tlie House of Conunons 
(along with Mr. Walpole) for malversation of public money. Cadogan 
lost his place of Lieutenant of the Tower. Marlborough’s daughters 
resigned their posts of ladies of the bedchamber ; and so complete 
was the Duke’s disgrace, that his son-in-law, Lord Bridgewater, 
was absolutely obliged to give up his lodgings at St. James’s, and 
had his half-pension, as Master of the Horse, taken aw^ay. But I 
think the lowest depth of Marlborough’s fall was when he humbly 
sent to ask General Webb when he might wait upon him ; he who 
had commanded the stout old General, who had injured him and 
sneered at him, who had kept him dangling in his ante-chamber, 
who could not even after his great service condescend to write him 
a letter in his own hand ! The nation was as eager for peace as 
ever it had been hot for war. The Prince of Savoy came amongst 
us, had his audience of the Queen, and got his famous Sword of 
Honour, and strove with all his force to form a Whig party together, 
to bring over the young Prince of Hanover — to do anything which 
might prolong the war, and consummate the ruin of the old sovereign 
whom he hated so implacably. But the nation was tired of the 
struggle : so completely wearied of it that not even our defeat at 
Denain could rouse us into any anger, though such an action so lost 
two years before would have set all England in a fury. ’Twas easy 
to see that the great Marlborough was not with the army. Eugene 
was obliged to fall back in a rage, and forego the dazzling revenge 
of his life. ’Twas in vain the Duke’s side asked, “Would we suffer 
our arms to be insulted? Would we not send back the only 
champion who could repair our honour ? ” The nation had had its 
bellyfol of fighting; nor could taunts or outcries goad up our Britons 
any more. 

For a statesman that was always prating of liberty, and had the 
grandest philosophic maxims in his mouth, it must be owned that 
Mr. St. John sometimes rather acted like a Turkish than a Greek 
philosopher, and especially fell foul of one unfortunate set of men, 
the men of letters, with a tyranny a little extraordinary in a man 
who professed to respect their calling so much. The literary con- 
troversy at this time was very bitter, the Government side was the 
winning one, the popular one, and I think might have been the 
merciful one. ’Twas natural that the Opposition should be peevish 
and cry out : some men did so from their hearts, admiring the 
Duke of Marlborough’s prodigious talents, and deploring the dis- 
grace of the greatest general the -world ever knew : ’twas the 
stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men 
cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against 
these my Lord Bolingln'oke never showed the slightest mercy. 


PAMPHLETEERS 337 

whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without the least 
coinniiseration. 

From having been a man of arms Mr. Esmond had now come to 
be a man of letters, but on a safer side than that in which the 
above-cited poor fellows ventured their liberties and ears. There 
was no danger on ours, which was the winning side ; besides, Mr. 
Esmond pleased himself by thinking that he writ like a gentleman 
if he did not always succeed as a wit. 

Of the famous wits of that age, who have rendered Queen Anne’s 
reign illustrious, and whose works will be in all Englishmen’s hands 
in ages yet to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at public places 
chiefly; never having a great intimacy with any of them, except 
with honest Dick Steele and Mr. Addison, who parted company 
with Esmond, however, when that gentleman became a declared 
Tory, and lived on close terms with the leading persons of that 
party. Addison kept himself to a few friends, and very rarely 
opened himself except in their company. A man more upright and 
conscientious than he it was not possible to find in public life, and 
one whose conversation was so various, easy, and delightful. Writing 
now in my mature years, I own that I think Addison’s politics were 
the right, and were my time to come over again, I would be a 
Whig in England and not a Tory ; but with people that take a side 
in politics, ’tis men rather than principles that commonly bind them. 
A kindness or a slight puts a man under one flag or the other, and 
he marches with it to the end of the campaign. Esmond’s master 
in war was injured by Marlborough, and hated him ; and the 
lieutenant fought the quarrels of his leader. Webb coming to 
London was used as a weapon by Marlborough’s enemies (and true 
steel he was, that honest chief) ; nor was his aide-de-camp, Mr. 
Esmond, an unfaithful or unworthy partisan. ’Tis strange here, 
and on a foreign soil, and in a land that is independent in all but 
the name (for that the North American colonies shall remain 
dependants on yonder little island for twenty years more, I never 
can think), to remember how the nation at home seemed to give 
itself up to the domination of one or other aristocratic party, and 
took a Hanoverian king, or a French one, according as either pre- 
vailed. And while the Tories, the October Club gentlemen, the 
High Church parsons that held by the Church of England, were for 
having a Papist king, for whom many of their Scottish and English 
leaders, firm churchmen all, laid down their lives with admirable 
loyalty and devotion ; they were governed by men who had notori- 
ously no religion at all, but used it as they would use any opinion 
for the purpose of forwarding their own ambition. The Whigs, on 
the other hand, who professed attachment to religion and liberty 


338 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


too, were compelled to send to Holland or Hanover for a monarch 
around whom they could rally. A strange series of compromises is 
that English History : compromise of principle, compromise of 
party, compromise of worship ! The lovers of English freedom and 
independence submitted their religious consciences to an Act of 
Parliament; could not consolidate their liberty without sending to 
Zell or the Hague for a king to live under ; and could not find 
amongst the proudest people in the world a man speaking their own 
language, and understanding their laws, to govern them. The Tory 
and High Church patriots were ready to die in defence of a Papist 
family that had sold us to France ; the great Whig nobles, the 
sturdy republican recusants who had cut off Charles Stuart’s head 
for treason, were fain to accept a King whose title came to him 
through a royal grandmother, whose own royal grandmother’s head 
had fallen under Queen Bess’s hatchet. And our proud English 
nobles sent to a petty German town for a monarch to come and 
reign in London ; and our prelates kissed the ugly hands of his 
Dutch mistresses, and thought it no dishonour. In England you 
can but belong to one party or t’other, and you take the house you 
live in with all its encumbrances, its retainers, its antique dis- 
comforts, and ruins even; you patch up, but you never build up 
anew. Will we of the New World submit much longer, even 
nominally, to this ancient British superstition ? There are signs of 
the times which make me think that ere long we shall care as little 
about King George here, and peers temporal and peers spiritual, as 
we do for King Canute or the Druids. 

This chapter began about the wits, my grandson may say, and 
hath wandered very far from their company. The pleasantest of 
the wits I knew were the Doctors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. 
Gay, the author of “ Trivia,” the most charming kind soul that ever 
laughed at a joke or cracked a bottle. Mr. Prior I saw, and he was 
the earthen pot swimming with the pots of brass down tlie stream, 
and always and justly frightened lest he should break in the voyage. 
I met him both at London and Paris, where he was performing 
piteous congees to the Duke of Shrewsbury, not having courage to 
support the dignity which his undeniable genius and talent had won 
him, and writing coaxing letters to Secretary St. John, and thinking 
about his plate and his place, and what on earth should become of 
him should his party go out. The famous Mr. Congreve I saw a 
dozen of times at Button’s, a splendid wreck of a man, magnificently 
attired, and though gouty, and almost blind, bearing a brave face 
against fortune. 

The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious genius I have no words 
to express my admiration) was quite a puny lad at this time, appear- 


THE WITS OF 1712 


339 


iiig seldom in public places. There were hundreds of men, wits, 
and pretty fellows frequenting the theatres and coffee-houses of that 
day — whom “nunc perscribere longum est.” Indeed I think the 
most brilliant of that sort I ever saw was not till fifteen years after- 
wards, when I paid my last visit in England, and met young Harry 
Fielding, son of the Fielding that served in Spain and afterwards in 
Flanders with us, and who for fun and humour seemed to top them 
all. As for the famous Doctor Swift, I can say of him, “Vidi 
tantum.” He was in London all these years up to the death of the 
Queen ; and in a hundred public places where I saw him, but no 
more ; he never missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he 
was pointed out to your grandfather. He would have sought me 
out eagerly enough had I been a great man with a title to my name, 
or a star on my coat. At Court the Doctor had no eyes but for 
the very greatest. Lord Treasurer and St. John used to call him 
Jonathan, and they paid him with this cheap coin for the service 
they took of him. He writ their lampoons, fought their enemies, 
flogged and bullied in their service, and it must be owned with a 
consummate skill and fierceness. ’Tis said he hath lost his intel- 
lect now, and forgotten his wrongs and his rage against mankind. 
I have always thought of him and of Marlborough as the two 
gi'eatest men of that age. I have read his books (who doth not 
know them I) here in our calm woods, and imagine a giant to myself 
as I think of him, a lonely fallen Prometheus, groaning as the 
vulture tears him. Prometheus I saw, but when first I ever had 
any words with him, the giant stepped out of a sedan chair in the 
Poultry, whither he had come with a tipsy Irish servant parading 
before him, who announced him, bawling out his Keverence’s name, 
whilst his master below was as yet haggling with the chairman. I 
disliked this Mr. Swift, and heard many a story about him, of his 
conduct to men, and his words to women. He could flatter the 
great as much as he could bully the weak ; and Mr. Esmond, being 
younger and hotter in that day than now, was determined, should 
he ever meet this cLagon, not to run away from his teeth and 
his fire. 

Men have all sorts of motives which carry them onwards in life, 
and are driven into acts of desperation, or it may be of distinction, 
from a hundred different causes. There was one comrade of 
Esmond’s, an honest little Irish lieutenant of Handyside’s, who owed 
so much money to a camp sutler, that he began to make love to the 
man’s daughter, intending to pay his debt that way ; and at the 
battle of Malplaquet, flying away from the debt and lady too, he 
rushed so desperately on the French lines, that he got his company ; 
and came a captain out of the action, and had to marry the sutler’s 


340 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


(laughter after all, who brought him his cancelled debt to her father 
as poor Roger’s fortune. To run out of the reach of bill and 
marriage, he ran on the enemy’s pikes ; and as these did not kill 
him he was thrown back upon t’other liorn of his dilemma. Our 
great Duke at the same battle was fighting, not the French, but the 
Tories in England ; and risking his life and the army’s, not for his 
country but for his pay and places ; and for fear of his wife at home, 
that only being in life whom he dreaded. I have asked about men 
in my own company (new drafts of poor country boys were per- 
petually coming over to us during the wars, and brought from the 
ploughshare to the sword), and found that a half of them under the 
flags were driven thither on account of a woman : one fellow was 
jilted by his mistress and took the shilling in despair ; another jilted 
the girl, and fled from her and the parish to the tents where the law 
could not disturb him. Why go on particularising ? What can the 
sons of Adam and Eve expe(;t, but to continue in that course of love 
and trouble their father and mother set out on ? 0 my grandson ! 

I am drawing nigh to the end of that period of my history, when I 
was acquainted with the great world of England and Europe ; my 
years are past the Hebrew poet’s limit, and I say unto thee, all my 
troubles and joys too, for that matter, have come from a woman ; 
as thine will when thy destined course begins. ’Twas a woman that 
made a soldier of me, that set me intriguing afterwards ; I believe 
I would have spun smocks for her had she so bidden me ; what 
strength I had in my head I would have given her ; hath not every 
man in his degree had his Omphale and Delilah 1 Mine befooled 
me on the banks of the Thames, and in dear old England ; thou 
mayest find thine own by Rappahannoc. 

To please that woman then I tried to distinguish myself as 
a soldier, and afterwards as a wit and a politician; as to please 
another I would have put on a black cassock and a pair of bands, 
and had done so but that a superior fate intervened to defeat that 
project. And I say, I think the world is like Captain Esmond’s 
company I spoke of anon ; and could you see every man’s career 
ill life, you would find a woman clogging him; or clinging round 
his march and stopping him ; or cheering him and goading him ; 
or beckoning him out of her chariot, so that he goes up to her, and 
leaves the race to be run without him ; or bringing him the apple, 
and saying “Eat;” or fetching him the daggers and whispering 
“ Kill ! yonder lies Duncan, and a crown, and an opportunity.” 

Your grandfather fought with more effect as a politician than 
as a wit ; and having private animosities and grievances of his own 
and liis General’s against the great Duke in command of the army, 
and more information on military matters than most writers, who 


DOCTOR BOBADIL S41 

had never seen beyond the fire of a tobacco-pipe at “ Wills’s,” he 
was enabled to do good service for that cause which he embarked 
in, and for Mr. St. J ohn and his party. But he disdained the abuse 
in which some of the Tory writers indulged ; for instance. Doctor 
Swift, who actually chose to doubt the Duke of Marlborough’s 
courage, and was pleased to hint that his Grace’s military capacity was 
doubtful : nor were Esmond’s performances worse for the effect they 
were intended to produce (though no doubt they could not injure 
the Duke of Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as 
the malignant attacks of Swift did, which were carefully directed 
so as to blacken and degrade him), because they were writ openly 
and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no disguise of them, who was 
now out of the army, and who never attacked the prodigious courage 
and talents, only the selfishness and rapacity, of the chief. 

The Colonel then, having writ a paper for one of the Tory 
journals, called the Post-Boy (a letter upon Bouchain, that the town 
talked about for two whole days, when the appearance of an Italian 
singer supplied a fresh subject for conversation), and having business 
at the Exchange, where Mrs. Beatrix wanted a pair of gloves or 
a fan very likely, Esmond went to correct his paper, and was sitting 
at the printer’s, when the famous Doctor Swift came in, his Irish 
fellow with him that used to walk before his chair, and bawled out 
his master’s name with great dignity. 

Mr. Esmond was waiting for the printer too, whose wife had 
gone to the tavern to fetch him, and was meantime engaged in 
drawing a picture of a soldier on horseback for a dirty little pretty 
boy of the printer’s wife, whom she had left behind her. 

“ I presume you are the editor of the Post-Boy, sir ? ” says the 
Doctor in a grating voice that had an Irish twang ; and he looked 
at the Colonel from under his two bushy eyebrows with a pair of 
very clear blue eyes. His complexion was muddy, his figure rather 
fat, his chin double. He wore a shabby cassock, and a shabby hat 
over his black wig, and he pulled out a great gold watch, at which 
he looks very fierce. 

“I am but a contributor, Doctor Swift,” says Esmond, with 
the little boy still on his knee. He was sitting with his back in 
the window, so that the Doctor could not see him. 

“ Who told you I was Doctor Swift ? ” says the Doctor, eyeing 
the other very haughtily. 

“Your Reverence’s valet bawled out your name,” says the 
Colonel. “ I should judge you brought him from Ireland % ” 

“ And pray, sir, what right have you to judge whether my 
servant came from Ireland or no? I want to speak witli your 
eniidoyer, Mr. Leach. I’ll thank ye go fetch him.” 


342 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ Where’s your papa, Toniiny ? ” asks the Colonel of the child, 
a smutty little wretch in a frock. 

Instead of answering, the child begins to cry ; the Doctor’s ap- 
pearance had no doubt frightened the poor little imp. 

“ Send that squalling little brat about his business, and do what 
I bid ye, sir,” says the Doctor. 

“ I must finish the picture first for Tommy,” says the Colonel, 
laughing. “ Here, Tommy, will you have your Pandour with 
whiskers or without '? ” 

“ Whisters,” says Tommy, quite intent on the picture. 

“Who the devil are ye, sir?” cries the Doctor; “are ye a 
printer’s man, or are ye not ? ” he pronounced it like naught. 

“Your Reverence needn’t raise the devil to ask who I am,” 
says Colonel Esmond. “Did you ever hear of Doctor Faustus, 
little Tommy? or Friar Bacon, who invented gunpowder, and set 
the Thames on fire ? ” 

Mr. Swift turned quite red, almost purple. “ I did not intend 
any offence, sir,” says he. 

“ I dare say, sir, you offended without meaning,” says the other 
drily. 

“Who are ye, sir? Do you know who I am, sir? You are 
one of the pack of Grubb Street scribblers that my friend Mr. 
Secretary hath laid by the heels. How dare ye, sir, speak to me 
in this tone ? ” cries the Doctor in a great fume. 

“I beg your honour’s humble pardon if I have offended your 
lionour,” says Esmond, in a tone of great humility. “ Rather than 
be sent to the Compter, or be put in the pillory, there’s nothing I 
wouldn’t do. But Mrs. Leach, the printer’s latly, told me to mind 
Tommy whilst she went for her husband to the tavern, and I 
daren’t leave the child lest he should fall into the fire ; but if your 
Reverence will hold him ” 

“ I take the little beast ! ” says the Doctor, starting back. “ I 
am engaged to your betters, fellow. Tell Mr. Leach that when 
he makes an appointment with Doctor Swift he had best keep it, 
do ye hear ? And keep a respectful tongue in your head, sir, when 
you address a person like me.” 

“ I’m but a poor broken-down soldier,” says the Colonel, “ and 
I’ve seen better days, though I am forced now to turn my hand to 
writing. We can’t help our fate, sir.” 

“You’re the person that Mr. Leach hath spoken to me of, I 
presume. Have the goodness to speak civilly when you are spoken 
to — and tell Leach to call at my lodgings in Bury Street, and bring 
the papers with him to-night at ten o’clock. And the next time 
you see me, you’ll know me, and be civil, Mr. Kemp.” 


DOCTOR SWIFT 


348 


Poor Kemp, who had been a lieutenant at the beginning of the 
war, and fallen into misfortune, was the writer of the Fost-Boy, 
and now took honest Mr. Leach’s pay in place of her Majesty’s. 
Esmond had seen this gentleman, and a very ingenious, hard-working, 
honest fellow he was, toiling to give bread to a great family, and 
watching up many a long winter night to keep the wolf from his 
door. And Mr. St. John, who had liberty always on his tongue, 
had just sent a dozen of the Opposition writers into prison, and one 
actually into the pillory, for what he called libels, but libels not 
half so violent as those writ on our side. With regard to this very 
piece of tyranny, Esmond had remonstrated strongly with the Secre- 
tary, who laughed, and said the rascals were served quite right ; 
and told Esmond a joke of Swift’s regarding the matter. Nay, 
more, this Irishman, when St. John was about to pardon a poor 
wretch condemned to death for rape, absolutely prevented the Secre- 
tary from exercising this act of good-nature, and boasted that he 
had had the man hanged ; and great as the Doctor’s genius might 
be, and splendid his ability, Esmond for one would affect no love for 
him, and never desired to make his acquaintance. The Doctor was 
at Court every Sunday assiduously enough, a place the Colonel 
frequented but rarely, though he had a great inducement to go there 
in the person of a fair maid of honour of her Majesty’s ; and the 
airs and patronage Mr. Swift gave himself, forgetting gentlemen of 
his country whom he knew perfectly, his loud talk at once insolent 
and servile, nay, perhaps, his very intimacy with Lord Treasurer 
and the Secretary, who indulged all his freaks and called him 
Jonathan, you may be sure, were remarked by many a person of 
whom the proud priest himself took no note, during that time of 
his vanity and triumph. 

’Twas but three days after the 15th of November 1712 
(Esmond minds him well of the date), that he went by invitation 
to dine with his General, the foot of whose table he used to take 
on these festive occasions, as he had done at many a board, hard 
and plentiful, during the campaign. This was a great feast, and 
of the latter sort; the honest old gentleman loved to treat his 
friends splendidly : his Grace of Ormonde, before he joined his 
army as Generalissimo ; my Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, one of her 
Majesty’s Secretaries of State ; my Lord Orkney, that had served 
with us abroad, being of the party. His Grace of Hamilton, 
Master of the Ordnance, and in whose honour the feast had been 
given, upon his approaching departure as Ambassador to Paris, 
had sent an excuse to General Webb at two o’clock, but an hour 
before the dinner: nothing but the most immediate business, his 
Grace said, should have prevented him having the pleasure of 


344. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

drinking a parting glass to the health of General Webb. His 
absence disapi)ointed Esmond’s old chief, who suffered much from 
his wounds besides ; and though the company was grand, it was 
rather gloomy. St. John came last, and brought a friend with 
him : “ I’m sure,” says my General, bowing very politely, “ my table 
hath always a place for Doctor Swift.” 

Mr. Esmond went up to the Doctor with a bow and a smile : — 
“I gave Doctor Swift’s message,” says he, “to the printer : I hope 
he brought your pamphlet to your lodgings in time.” Indeed poor 
Leach had come to his house very soon after the Doctor left it, 
being brought away rather tipsy from the tavern by his thrifty 
wife ; and he talked of Cousin Swift in a maudlin way, though of 
course Mr. Esmond did not allude to this relationship. The Doctor 
scowled, blushed, and was much confused, and said scarce a word 
during the whole of dinner. A very little stone will sometimes 
knock down these Goliaths of wit ; and this one was often dis- 
comfited when met by a man of any spirit ; he took his place 
sulkily, put water in his wine that the others drank plentiffdly, 
and scarce said a word. 

The talk was about the affairs of the day, or rather about 
persons than affairs : my Lady Marlborough’s fury, her daughters 
in old clothes and mob-caps looking out from their windows and 
seeing the company pass to the Drawing-room; the gentleman- 
usher’s horror when the Prince of Savoy was introduced to her 
Majesty in a tie-wig, no man out of a full-bottomed periwig ever 
having kissed the Royal hand before ; about the Mohawks and the 
damage they were doing, rushing through the town, killing and 
murdering. Some one said the ill-omened face of Mohun had been 
seen at the theatre the night before, and Macartney and Meredith 
with him. Meant to be a feast, the meeting, in spite of drink and 
talk, was as dismal as a funeral. Every topic started subsided 
into gloom. His Grace of Ormonde went away because the con- 
versation got upon Denain, where we had been defeated in the last 
campaign. Esmond’s General was affected at the allusion to this 
action too, for his comrade of Wynendael, the Count of Nassau 
Woudenbourg, had been slain there. Mr. Swift, when Esmond 
pledged him, said he drank no wine, and took his hat from the 
peg and went away, beckoning my Lord Bolingbroke to follow 
him ; but the other bade him take his chariot and save his coach- 
hire — he had to speak with Colonel Esmond ; and when the rest 
of the company withdrew to cards, these two remained behind in 
the dark. 

Bolingbroke always spoke freely when he had drunk freely. 
His enemies could get any secret out of him in that condition; 


THE SECRETARY OVER HIS WINE 


345 


women were even employed to ply him, and take his words down. 
I have heard that my Lord Stair, three years after, when the 
Secretary fled to France and became the Pretender’s Minister, got 
all the information he wanted by putting female spies over St. John 
in his cups. He spoke freely now : — “Jonathan knows nothing of 
this for certain, though he suspects it, and by George, Webb will 
take an Archbishopric, and Jonathan a — no, — damme — Jonathan 
will take an Archbishopric from James, I warrant me, gladly 
enough. Your Duke hath the string of the whole matter in his 
liand,” the Secretary went on. “We have that which will force 
Marlborough to keep his distance, and he goes out of London in 
a fortnight. Prior hath his business ; he left me this morning, 
and mark me, Harry, should fate carry off our august, our beloved, 
our most gouty and plethoric Queen, and Defender of the Faith, 
la bonne cause triomphera. A la santd de la bonne cause ! Every- 
thing good comes from France. Wine comes from France; give us 
another bumper to the bonne cause.” We drank it together. 

“ Will the bonne cause turn Protestant ? ” asked Mr. Esmond. 

“No, hang it,” says the other, “ he’ll defend our Faith as in 
duty bound, but he’ll stick by his own. The Hind and the Panther 
shall run in the same car, by Jove ! Righteousness and peace shall 
kiss each other : and we’ll have Father Massillon to walk down the 
aisle of St. Paul’s, cheek by jowl with Dr. Sacheverel. Give us 
more wine : here’s a health to the bonne cause, kneeling — damme, 
let’s drink it kneeling ! ” He was quite flushed and wild with wine 
as he was talking. 

“And suppose,” says Esmond, who always had this gloomy 
apprehension, “the bonne cause should give us up to the French, 
as his father and uncle did before him ? ” 

“ Give us up to the French ! ” starts up Bolingbroke : “is there 
any English gentleman that fears that 'I You who have seen Blen- 
heim and Ramillies, afraid of the French ! Your ancestors and 
mine, and brave old Webb’s yonder, have met them in a hundred 
fields, and our children will be ready to do the like. Who’s he that 
wishes for more men from England 'I My cousin W estmoreland ? 
Give us up to the French, pshaw ! ” 

“ His uncle did,” says Mr. Esmond. 

“ And what happened to his grandfather ? ” broke out St. J ohn, 
filling out another bumper. “ Here’s to the greatest monarch 
England ever saw ; here’s to the Englishman that made a kingdom 
of her. Our great King came from Huntingdon, not Hanover ; our 
fathers didn’t look for a Dutchman to rule us. Let him come and 
we’ll keep him, and we’ll show him Whitehall. If he’s a traitor, 
let us have him here to deal with him ; and then there are spirits 


34>6 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

here as great as any tliat have gone before. There are men here 
that can look at danger in the face and not be frightened at it. 
Traitor ! treason ! what names are these to scare you and me ? 
Are all Oliver’s men dead, or his glorious name forgotten in fifty 
years 'I Are there no men equal to him, think you, as good — ay, 
as good 'I God save the King ! and, if the monarchy fails us, God 
save the British Republic ! ” 

He filled another great bumper, and tossed it up and drained it 
wildly, just as the noise of rapid carriage wheels approaching was 
stopped at our door, and after a hurried knock and a moment’s 
interval, Mr. Swift came into the hall, ran upstairs to the room 
we were dining in, and entered it with a perturbed face. St. 
John, excited with drink, was making some wild quotation out of 
“ Macbeth,” but Swift stopped him. 

“ Drink no more, my Lord, for God’s sake ! ” says he. “ I come 
with the most dreadful news.” 

“Is the Queen dead?” cries out Bolingbroke, seizing on a water- 
glass. 

“No, Duke Hamilton is dead; he was murdered an hour ago 
by Mohun and Macartney ; they had a quarrel this morning ; they 
gave him not so much time as to write a letter. He went for a 
couple of his friends, and he is dead, and Mohun, too, the bloody 
villain, who was set on him. They fought in Hyde Park just before 
sunset; the Duke killed Mohun, and Macartney came up and stabbed 
him, and the dog is fled. I have your chariot below ; send to every 
part of the country and apprehend that villain ; come to the Duke’s 
house and see if any life be left in him.” 

“0 Beatrix, Beatrix,” thought Esmond, “and here ends my 
poor girl’s ambition ! ” 


CHAPTER VI 


POOR BEATRIX 

T here had been no need to urge upon Esmond the necessity 
of a separation between him and Beatrix : Fate had done 
that completely ; and I think from the very moment poor 
Beatrix had accepted the Duke’s offer, she began to assume the 
majestic air of a Duchess, nay, Queen Elect, and to carry herself 
as one sacred and removed from us common people. Her mother 
and kinsman both fell into her ways, the latter scornfully perhaps, 
and uttering his usual gibes at her vanity and his own. There was 
a certain charm about this girl of which neither Colonel Esmond nor 
his fond mistress could forego the fascination ; in spite of her faults 
and her pride and wilfulness, they w'ere forced to love her; and, 
indeed, might be set down as the two chief flatterers of the brilliant 
creature’s court. 

Who, in the course of his life, hath not been so bewitched, and 
worshipped some idol or another 1 Years after this passion hath 
been dead and buried, along with a thousand other worldly cares 
and ambitions, he who felt it can recall it out of its grave, and 
admire, almost as fondly as he did in his youth, that lovely queenly 
creature. I invoke that beautiful spirit from the shades and love 
her still ; or rather I should say such a past is always present to a 
man ; such a passion once felt forms a part of his whole being, and 
cannot be separated from it; it becomes a portion of the man of 
to-day, just as any great faith or conviction, the discovery of poetry, 
the awakening of religion, ever afterwards influence him ; just as 
the wmund I had at Blenheim, and of which I w^ear the scar, hath 
become part of my frame and influenced my whole body, nay, spirit 
subsequently, though ’twas got and healed forty years ago. Parting 
and forgetting ! What faithful heart can do these 1 Our great 
thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. 
Surely, they cannot separate from our consciousness ; shall follow 
it w’^hithersoever that shall go ; and are of their nature divine and 
immortal. 

With the horrible news of this catastrophe, which was con- 
firmed by ^he weeping domestics at the Duke’s own door, Esmond 


348 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


rode homewards as quick as his lazy coach would carry him, devis 
iiig all the time how he should break the intelligence to the person 
most concerned in it ; and if a satire upon human vanity could be 
needed, that poor soul afforded it in the altered company and 
occupations in which Esmond found her. For days before, her 
chariot had been rolling the street from mercer to toyshop — from 
goldsmith to laceman : her taste was perfect, or at least the fond 
bridegroom had thought so, and had given her entire authority over 
all tradesmen, and for all the plate, furniture, and equipages, with 
which his Grace the Ambassador wished to adorn his splendid 
mission. She must have her picture by Kneller, a duchess not 
being complete without a portrait, and a noble one he made, and 
actually sketched in, on a cushion, a coronet which she was about 
to wear. She vowed she would wear it at King James the Third’s 
coronation, and never a princess in the land would have become 
ermine better. Esmond found the ante-chamber crowded with 
milliners and toyshop women, obsequious goldsmiths with jewels, 
salvers, and tankards ; and mercers’ men with hangings, and velvets, 
and brocades. My Lady Duchess elect was giving audience to one 
famous silversmith from Exeter Change, who brought with him a 
great chased salver, of which he was pointing out the beauties as 
Colonel Esmond entered. “ Come,” says she, “ cousin, and admire 
tlie taste of this pretty thing.” I think Mars and Venus were 
lying in the golden bower, that one gilt Cupid carried off the 
war-god’s casque — another his sword — another his great buckler, 
upon which my Lord Duke Hamilton’s arms with ours were to be 
engraved — and a fourth was kneeling down to the reclining goddess 
with the ducal coronet in her hands, God help us ! The next time 
Mr. Esmond saw that piece of plate, the arms were changed : the 
ducal coronet had been replaced by a viscount’s : it formed part of 
the fortune of the thrifty goldsmith’s own daughter, when she 
married my Lord Viscount Squanderfield two years after. 

“ Isn’t this a beautiful piece 1 ” says Beatrix, examining it, and 
slie pointed out the arch graces of the Cupids, and the fine carving 
of the languid prostrate Mars. Esmond sickened as he thought of 
the warrior dead in his chamber, his servants and children weeping 
around him ; and of this smiling creature attiring herself, as it were, 
for that nuptial deathbed. “ ’Tis a pretty piece of vanity,” says 
he, looking gloomily at the beautiful creature : there were flambeaux 
in the room lighting up the brilliant mistress of it. She lifted up 
the great gold salver witli lier fair arms. 

“Vanity!” says she haughtily. “What is vanity in you, 
sir, is propriety in me. You ask a Jewish price for it, Mr. Graves ; 
but have it I will, if only to spite Mr. Esmond.” 


VANITAS VANITATUM 349 

“ 0 Beatrix, lay it down ! ” says Mr. Esmond. “ Herodias ! 
you know not what you carry in the charger.” 

She dropped it with a clang; the eager goldsmith running to seize 
his fallen ware. The lady’s face caught the fright from Esmond’s 
pale countenance, and her eyes shone out like beacons of alarm : — 
“ What is it, Henry ? ” says she, nmning to him, and seizing both his 
hands. “What do you mean by your pale face and gloomy tones'? ” 

“ Come away, come away ! ” says Esmond, leading her : she 
clung frightened to him, and he supported her upon his heart, bid- 
ding the scared goldsmith leave them. The man went into the next 
apartment, staring with surprise, and hugging his precious charger. 

“Oh, my Beatrix, my sister!” says Esmond, still holding in 
his arms the pallid and affrighted creature, “ you have the greatest 
courage of any woman in the world ; prepare to show it now, for 
you have a dreadful trial to bear.” 

She sprang away from the friend who would have protected 
her : — “ Hath he left me 1 ” says she. “ We had words this 
morning : he was very gloomy, and I angered him : but he dared 
not, he dared not I ” As she spoke a burning blush flushed over 
her whole face and bosom. Esmond saw it reflected in the glass by 
which she stood, with clenched hands, pressing her swelling heart. 

“ He has left you,” says Esmond, wondering that rage rather 
than sorrow was in her looks. 

“ And he is alive,” cries Beatrix, “ and you bring me this com- 
mission ! He has left me, and you haven’t dared to avenge me ! 
You, that pretend to be the champion of our house, have let me suffer 
this insult ! Where is Castlewood '? I will go to my brother.” 

“ The Duke is not alive, Beatrix,” said Esmond. 

She looked at her cousin wildly, and fell back to the wall as 
though shot in the breast: — “And you come here, and— and — you 
killed him 1 ” 

“ No ; thank Heaven ! ” her kinsman said. “ The blood of that 
noble heart doth not stain my sword ! In its last hour it was 
faithful to thee, Beatrix Esmond. Vain and cruel woman 1 kneel 
and thank the awful Heaven which awards life and death, and 
chastises pride, that the noble Hamilton died true to you ; at least 
that ’twas not your quarrel, or your pride, or your wicked vanity, 
that drove him to his fate. He died by the bloody sword which 
already had drunk your own father’s blood. 0 woman, 0 sister ! 
to that sad field where two corpses are lying — for the murderer 
died too by the hand of the man he slew — can you bring no 
mourners but your revenge and your vanity'? God help and 
jjardon thee, Beatrix, as He brings this awful punishment to your 
hard and rebellious heart.” 


350 


THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Esmond had scarce done speaking, wlien his mistress came in. 
The colloquy between him and Beatrix had lasted but a few minutes, 
during wliich time Esmond’s servant had carried the disastrous 
news through the household. The army of Vanity Fair, waiting 
without, gathered up all their fripperies and lied aghast. Tender 
Lady Castlewood had been in talk above with Dean Atterbury, the 
pious creature’s almoner and director ; and the Dean had entered 
with her as a physician whose place was at a sick-bed. Beatrix’s 
mother looked at Esmond and ran towards her daughter, with a 
])ale face and open heart and hands, all kindness and pity. But 
Beatrix passed her by, nor would she have any of the medicaments 
of the spiritual physician. “ I am best in my own room and by 
myself,” she said. Her eyes were quite dry ; nor did Esmond ever 
see them otherwise save once, in respect to that grief. She gave 
him a cold hand as she went out : “ Thank you, brother,” she said, 
in a low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears ; 

“ all you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and ask 

pardon.” The three others remained behind, and talked over the 

dreadful story. It affected Doctor Atterbury more even than us, 

as it seemed. The death of Mohun, her husband’s murderer, was 
more awful to my mistress than even the Duke’s unhappy end. 
Esmond gave at length what particulars he knew of their quarrel, 
and the cause of it. The two noblemen had long been at war with 
respect to the Lord Gerard’s property, whose two daughters my 
Lord Duke and Mohun had married. They had met by appoint- 
ment that day at the lawyer’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields ; had words 
which, though they appeared very trifling to those who heard them, 
were not so to men exasperated by long and previous enmity. Mohun 
asked my Lord Duke where he could see his Grace’s friends, and 
within an hour had sent two of his own to arrange this deadly duel. 
It was pursued with such fierceness, and sprang from so trifling a 
cause, that all men agreed at the time that there was a party, of 
which these three notorious brawlers were but agents, who desired 
to take Duke Hamilton’s life away. They fought three on a side, 
as in that tragic meeting twelve years back, which hath been re- 
counted already, and in which Mohun performed his second murder. 
They rushed in, and closed upon each other at once without any 
feints or crossing of swords even, and stabbed one at the other 
desperately, each receiving many wounds ; and Mohun having his 
death-wound, and my Lord Duke lying by him. Macartney came 
up and stabbed his Grace as he lay on the ground, and gave him the 
blow of which he died. Colonel Macartney denied this, of which 
the horror and indignation of the whole kingdom would nevertheless 
have him guilty, and fled the country, whither he never returned. 


THE DUKE’S DEATH 


351 


Wliat was the real cause of the Duke Hainiltoii’s death'? — a 
paltry quarrel that might easily liave been made up, and with a 
ruffian so low, base, profligate, and degraded with former crimes 
and repeated murders, that a man of such renown and princely rank 
as my Lord Duke might have disdained to sully his sword with the 
blood of such a villain. But his spirit was so high that those who 
wished his death knew that his courage was like his charity, and 
never turned any man away ; and he died by the hands of Mohun, 
and the other two cut-throats that were set on him. The Queen’s 
Ambassador to Paris died, the loyal and devoted servant of the 
House of Stuart, and a Royal Prince of Scotland himself, and carry- 
ing the confidence, the repentance of Queen Anne along with his 
own open devotion, and the good-will of millions in the country more, 
to the Queen’s exiled brother and sovereign. 

That party to which Lord Mohun belonged had the benefit of 
his service, and now were well rid of such a ruffian. He, and 
Meredith, and Macartney, were the Duke of Marlborough’s men ; 
and the two colonels had been broke but the year before for drink- 
ing perdition to the Tories. His Grace was a Whig now and a 
Hanoverian, and as eager for war as Prince Eugene himself. I say 
not that he was privy to Duke Hamilton’s death : I say that his 
party profited by it ; and that three desperate and bloody instruments 
were found to effect that murder. 

As Esmond and the Dean walked away from Kensington dis- 
coursing of this tragedy, and how fatal it was to the cause which 
they both had at heart, the street-criers were already out with their 
broadsides, shouting through the town the full, true, and horrible 
account of the death of Lord Mohun and Duke Hamilton in a duel. 
A fellow had got to Kensington and was crying it in the square 
there at very early morning, when Mr. Esmond happened to pass 
by. He drove the man from under Beatrix’s very window, whereof 
the casement had been set open. The sun was shining though ’twas 
November : he had seen the market-carts rolling into London, the 
guard relieved at the palace, the labourers trudging to their work 
in the gardens between Kensington and the City — the wandering 
merchants and hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world 
was going to its business again, althougli dukes lay dead and ladies 
mourned for them ; and kings, very likely, lost their chances. So 
night and day pass away, and to-morrow comes, and our place 
knows us not. Esmond thought of tlie courier, now galloping on 
the North road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yesterday, 
that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand great 
schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart, 
beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust quiescent. 


CHAPTER VII 

/ VISIT CASTLEIVOOD ONCE MORE 


T hus, for a third time, Beatrix’s ambitious hopes were circum- 
vented, and she might well believe that a special malignant 
fate watched and pursued her, tearing her prize out of her 
hand just as she seemed to grasp it, and leaving her with only rage 
and grief for her jiortion. Whatever her feelings might have been 
of anger or of sorrow (and I fear me that the former emotion was 
that which most tore her heart), she would take no confidant, as 
people of softer natures would have done under such a calamity ; 
her mother and her kinsman knew that she would disdain their 
pity, and that to offer it would be but to infuriate the cruel wound 
which fortune had inflicted. We knew that her pride was awfully 
humbled and punished by this sudden and terrible blow; she wanted 
no teaching of ours to point out the sad moral of her story. Her 
fond mother could give but her prayers, and her kinsman his faithful 
friendship and patience to the unhappy, stricken creature ; and it 
was only by hints, and a word or two uttered months afterwards, 
that Beatrix showed she understood their silent commiseration, and 
on her part was secretly thankful for their forbearance. The people 
about the Court said there was that in her manner which frightened 
away scoffing and condolence : she was above their triumph and 
their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and 
courageously ; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to 
admire her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but 
respect the indomitable courage and majestic calm with which she 
bore it. “I would rather see her tears than her pride,” her mother 
said, who was accustomed to bear her sorrows in a very different 
way, and to receive them as the stroke of God, with an awful sub- 
mission and meekness. But Beatrix’s nature was different to that 
tender parent’s ; she seemed to accept her grief, and to defy it ; nor 
would she allow it (I believe not even in private and in her own 
chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of humilia- 
tion or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come 
after me, in which way will you bear your trials ? I know one that 
prays God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye 


353 


THE BEGINNING OF A PLOT 

all-seeing shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should 
judge proud spirits otherwise than charitably. ’Tis nature hath 
fashioned some for ambition and dominion, as it hath formed others 
for obedience and gentle submission. The leopard follows her nature 
as the lamb does, and acts after leopard law ; she can neither help 
her beauty, nor her courage, nor her cruelty ; nor a single spot on 
her shining coat ; nor the conquering spirit which impels her ; nor 
the shot which brings her down. 

During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the Queen 
should forsake their Hanoverian Prince, bound by oaths and treaties 
as she was to him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by 
yet stronger ties of nature and duty, — the Prince of Savoy, and the 
boldest of that party of the Whigs, were for bringing the young 
Duke of Cambridge over, in spite of the Queen, and the outcry of 
her Tory servants, arguing that the Electoral Prince, a Peer and 
Prince of the Blood-Royal of this Realm too, and in the line of 
succession to the crown, had a right to sit in the Parliament whereof 
he was a member, and to dwell in the country which he one day 
was to govern. Nothing but the strongest ill-will expressed by the 
Queen, and the people about her, and menaces of the Royal resent- 
ment, should this scheme be persisted in, prevented it from being 
carried into effect. 

The boldest on our side were, in like manner, for having our 
Prince into the country. The undoubted inheritor of the right 
divine ; the feelings of more than half the nation, of almost all the 
clergy, of the gentry of England and Scotland with him ; entirely 
innocent of the crime for which his father suffered — brave, young, 
handsome, unfortunate — who in England would dare to molest the 
Prince should he come among us, and fling himself upon British 
generosity, hospitality, and honour? An invader with an army of 
Frenchmen behind him, Englishmen of spirit would resist to the 
death, and drive back to the shores whence he came ; but a Prince, 
alone, armed with his right only, and relying on the loyalty of his 
people, was sure, many of his friends argued, of welcome, at least of 
safety, among us. The hand of his sister the Queen, of the people 
his subjects, never could be raised to do him a wrong. But the 
Queen was timid by nature, and the successive Ministers she had, 
had private causes for their irresolution. The bolder and honester 
men, who had at heart the illustrious young exile’s cause, had no 
scheme of interest of their own to prevept them from seeing the 
right done, and, provided only he came as an Englishman, were 
ready to venture their all to welcome and defend him. 

St. John and Harley both had kind words in plenty for the 
Prince’s adherents, and gave him endless promises of future support^ 
7 z 


354 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

but hints and promises were all they could be got to give ; and 
some of his friends were for measures much bolder, more efficacious, 
and more open. With a party of these, some of whom are yet 
alive, and some whose names Mr. Esmond has no right to mention, 
he found himself engaged the year after that miserable death of 
Duke Hamilton, which deprived the Prince of his most courageous 
ally in this country. Dean Atterbury was one of the friends whom 
Esmond may mention, as the brave bishop is now beyond exile and 
persecution, and to him, and one or two more, the Colonel opened 
himself of a scheme of his own, that, backed by a little resolution 
on the Prince’s part, could not Ml of bringing about the accom- 
plishment of their dearest wishes. 

My young Lord Viscount Castle wood had not come to England 
to keep his majority, and had now been absent from the country for 
several years. The year when his sister was to be married and 
Duke Hamilton died, my Lord was kept at Bruxelles by his wife’s 
lying-in. The gentle Clotilda could not bear her husband out of 
her sight ; perhaps she mistrusted the young scapegrace should he 
ever get loose from her leading-strings ; and she kept him by her 
side to nurse the baby and administer posset to the gossips. Many 
a laugh poor Beatrix had had about Frank’s uxoriousness : his 
mother would have gone to Clotilda when her time was coming, but 
that the mother-in-law was already in possession, and the negotia- 
tions for poor Beatrix’s marriage were begun. A few months after 
the horrid catastrophe in Hyde Park, my mistress and her daughter 
retired to Castlewood, where my Lord, it was expected, would soon 
join them. But, to say truth, their quiet household was little to 
his taste ; he could be got to come to Walcote but once after his first 
campaign ; and then the young rogue spent more than half his time 
in London, not appearing at Court or in public under his own name 
and title, but frequenting plays, bagnios, and the very worst com- 
pany, under the name of Captain Esmond (whereby his innocent 
kinsman got more than once into trouble) ; and so under various 
pretexts, and in pursuit of all sorts of pleasures, until he plunged 
into the lawful one of marriage, Frank Castlewood had remained 
away from this country and was unknown, save amongst the gentle- 
men of the army, with whom he had served abroad. The fond 
heart of his mother was pained by this long absence. ’Twas all 
that Henry Esmond could do to soothe her natural mortification, 
and find excuses for his kinsman’s. levity. 

In the autumn of the year 1713, Lord Castlewood thought of 
returning home. His first child had been a daughter ; Clotilda was 
in the way of gratifying his Lordship with a second, and the pious 
youth thought that, by bringing his wife to his ancestral home, by 


MY MISTRESS’S KNIGHT 


355 


prayers to St. Philip of Castlewood, and what not, Heaven might 
be induced to bless him with a son this time, for Avhose coming the 
expectant mamma was very anxious. 

The long-debated peace had been proclaimed this year at the 
end of March ; and France was open to us. Just as Frank’s poor 
mother had made all things ready for Lord Castlewood’s reception, 
and was eagerly expecting her son, it was by Colonel Esmond’s 
means that the kind lady was disappointed of her longing, and 
obliged to defer once more the darling hope of her heart. 

Esmond took horses to Castlewood. He had not seen its 
ancient grey towers and well-remembered woods for nearly fourteen 
years, and since he rode thence with my Lord, to whom his mistress 
with her young children by her side waved an adieu. What ages 
seemed to have passed since then, what years of action and passion, 
of care, love, hope, disaster ! The children were grown up now, 
and had stories of their own. As for Esmond, he felt to be a 
hundred years old ; his dear mistress only seemed unchanged ; she 
looked and welcomed him quite as of old. There was the fountain 
in the court babbling its familiar music, the old hall and its furni- 
ture, the carved chair my late lord used, the very flagon he drank 
from. Esmond’s mistress knew he would like to sleep in the little 
room he used to occupy ; ’twas made ready for him, and wallflowers 
and sweet herbs set in the adjoining chamber, the chaplain’s room. 

In tears of not unmanly emotion, with prayers of submission to 
the awful Dispenser of death and life, of good and evil fortune, 
Mr. Esmond passed a part of that first night at Castlewood, lying 
awake for many hours as the clock kept tolling (in tones so well 
remembered), looking back, as all men will, that revisit their home 
of childhood, over the great gulf of time, and surveying himself on 
the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy boy with his lord 
still alive — his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children sporting around 
her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had blessed 
him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be fliithful 
and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish 
promise 1 Yes, before Heaven ; yes, praise be to God ! His life 
had been hers ; his blood, his fortune, his name, his whole heart 
ever since had been hers and her children’s. All night long he 
was dreaming his boyhood over again, and waking fitfully ; he half 
fancied he heard Father Holt calling to him from the next chamber, 
and that he was coming in and out from the mysterious window. 

Esmond rose up before the dawn, passed into the next room, 
where the air was heavy with the odour of the wallflowers ; looked 
into the brazier where the papers had been burnt, into the old 
presses where Holt’s books and papers had been kept, and tried the 


B56 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

spring and whether the window worked still. The spring had not 
been touched for years, hut yielded at length, and the whole fabric 
of the window sank down. He lifted it and it relapsed into its 
frame; no one had ever passed thence since Holt used it sixteen 
years ago. 

Esmond remembered his poor lord saying, on the last day of his 
life, that Holt used to come in and out of the house like a ghost, 
and knew that the Father liked these mysteries, and practised such 
secret disguises, entrances -and exits : this was the way the ghost 
came and went, his pupil had always conjectured. Esmond closed 
the casement up again as the dawn was rising over Castlewood 
village ; he could hear the clinking at the blacksmith’s forge yonder 
among the trees, across the green, and past the river, on which a 
mist still lay sleeping. 

Next Esmond opened that long cupboard over the woodwork of 
the mantelpiece, big enough to hold a man, and in which Mr. Holt 
used to keep sundry secret properties of his. The two swords he 
remembered so well as a boy lay actually there still, and Esmond 
took them out and wiped them, with a strange curiosity of emotion. 
There were a bundle of papers here, too, which no doubt had been 
left at Holt’s last visit to the place, in my Lord Viscount’s life, that 
very day when the priest had been arrested and taken to Hexham 
Castle. Esmond made free with these papers, and found treasonable 
matter of King William’s reign, the names of Charnock and Perkins, 
Sir John Fenwick and Sir John Friend, Rookwood and Lodwick, 
Lords Montgomery and Ailesbury, Clarendon and Yarmouth, that 
had all been engaged in plots against the usurper ; a letter from the 
Duke of Berwick too, and one from the King at St. Germains, 
offering to confer upon his trusty and well-beloved Francis, Viscount 
Castlewood, the titles of Earl and Marquis of Esmond, bestowed by 
patent royal, and in the fourth year of his reign, upon Thomas, 
Viscount Castlewood, and the heirs-male of his body, in default 
of which issue the ranks and dignities were to pass to Francis 
aforesaid. 

This was the paper, whereof my Lord had spoken, which Holt 
showed him the very day he was arrested, and for an answer to 
which he would come back in a week’s time. I put these papers 
hastily into the crypt whence I had taken them, being interrupted 
by a tapping of a light finger at the ring of the chamber-door : 
’twas my kind mistress, with her face full of love and welcome. 
She, too, had passed the night wakefully no doubt : but neither 
asked the other how the hours had been spent. There are things 
we divine without speaking, and know though they happen out of 
our sight. This fond lady hath told me that she knew both days 


I ACQUAINT MY MISTRESS 357 

when I was wounded abroad. Who shall say how far sympathy 
reaches, and how truly love can prophesy 'I “ I looked into your 
room,” was all she said ; “ the bed was vacant, the little old bed ! 
I knew I should find you here.” And tender and blushing faintly, 
with a benediction in her eyes, the gentle creature kissed him. 

They walked out, hand-in-hand, through the old court, and to 
the terrace-walk, where the grass was glistening with dew, and the 
birds in the green woods above were singing their delicious choruses 
under the blushing morning sky. How well all things were remem- 
bered ! The ancient towers and gables of the Hall darkling against 
the east, the purple shadows on the green slopes, the quaint devices 
and carvings of the dial, the forest-crowned heights, the fair yellow 
plain cheerful with crops and corn, the shining river rolling through 
it towards the pearly hills beyond ; all these were before us, along 
with a thousand beautiful memories of our youth, beautiful and 
sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as that fair and always- 
remembered scene our eyes beheld once more. We forget nothing. 
The memory sleeps, but wakens again ; I often think how it shall 
be when, after the last sleep of death, the re'veillee shall arouse us 
for ever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, 
like the soul revivified. 

The house would not be up for some hours yet (it was July, 
and the dawn was only just awake), and here Esmond opened 
himself to his mistress of the business he had in hand, and what 
part Frank was to play in it. He knew he could confide anything 
to her, and that the fond soul would die rather than reveal it ; and 
bidding her keep the secret from all, he laid it entirely before his 
mistress (always as staunch a little loyalist as any in the kingdom), 
and indeed was quite sure that any plan of his was secure of her 
applause and sympathy. Never was such a glorious scheme to her 
partial mind, never such a devoted knight to execute it. An hour 
or two may have passed whilst they were having their colloquy. 
Beatrix came out to them just as their talk was over ; her tall 
beautiful form robed in sable (which she wore without ostentation 
ever since last year’s catastrophe), sweeping over the green terrace, 
and casting its shadows before her across the grass. 

She made us one of her grand curtseys smiling, and called us 
“ the young people.” She was older, paler, and more majestic 
than in the year before; her mother seemed the younger of the 
two. She never once spoke of her grief, Lady Castlewood told 
Esmond, or alluded, save by a quiet word or two, to the death of 
her hopes. 

When Beatrix came back to Castlewood she took to visiting all 
the cottages and all the sick. She set up a school of children^ and 


358 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

tauglit singing to some of them. We had a pair of beautiful old 
organs in Castlewood Chitrch, on which she played admirably, so 
that the music there became to be known in the country for many 
miles round, and no doubt people came to see the fair organist as 
well as to hear her. Parson Tusher and his wife were established 
at the vicarage, but his wife had brought him no children wherewith 
Tom might meet his enemies at the gate. Honest Tom took care 
not to have many such, his great shovel-hat was in his hand for 
everybody. He was profuse of bows and compliments. He be- 
haved to Esmond as if the Colonel had been a Commander-in-Chief ; 
he dined at the Hall that day, being Sunday, and would not partake 
of pudding except under extreme pressure. He deplored my Lord’s 
perversion, but drank his Lordship’s health very devoutly ; and an 
hour before at church sent the Colonel to sleep, with a long, 
learned, and refreshing sermon. 

Esmond’s visit home was but for two days ; the business he 
had in hand calling him away and out of the country. Ere he 
went, he saw Beatrix but once alone, and then she summoned him 
out of the long tapestry room, where he and his mistress were 
sitting, quite as in old times, into the adjoining chamber, that had 
been Viscountess Isabel’s sleeping apartment, and where Esmond 
perfectly well remembered seeing the old lady sitting up in the bed, 
in her night-rail, that morning when the troop of guard came to 
fetch her. The most beautiful woman in England lay in that bed 
now, whereof the great damask hangings were scarce faded since 
Esmond saw them last. 

Here stood Beatrix in her black robes, holding a box in lier 
hand ; ’twas that which Esmond had given her before her marriage, 
stamped with a coronet which the disappointed girl w’as never to 
wear : and containing his aunt’s legacy of diamonds. 

“You had best take these with you, Harry,” says she; “I 
have no need of diamonds any more.” . There was not the least 
token of emotion in her quiet low voice. She held out the black 
shagreen-case with her fair arm, that did not shake in the least. 
Esmond saw she wore a black velvet bracelet on it, with my Lord 
Duke’s picture in enamel ; he had given it her but three days before 
he fell. 

Esmond said the stones were his no longer, and strove to turn 
off that proffered restoration with a laugh : “ Of what good,” says 
he, “ are they to me 1 The diajnond loop to his hat did not set 
off Prince Eugene, and will not make my yellow face look any 
handsomer.” 

“You will give them to your wife, cousin,” says she. “ My 
cousin, your wife has a lovely complexion and shape.” 


A LAST AVORD FROM BEATRIX 35.9 

“ Beatrix,” Esmond burst out, the old fire flaming out as it 
would at times, “ will you wear those trinkets at your marriage 1 
You whispered once you did not know me : you know me better 
now ; how I sought, what I have sighed for, for ten years, what 
foregone ! ” 

“ A price for your constancy, my Lord ! ” says she ; “ such a 
preux chevalier wants to be paid. Oh fie, cousin ! ” 

“ Again,” Esmond spoke out, “ if I do something you have at 
heart ; something worthy of me and you ; something that shall 
make me a name with which to endow you; will you take it? 
There was a chance for me once, you said ; is it impossible to recall 
it? Never shake your head, but hear me; say you will hear me a 
year hence. If I come back to you and bring you fame, will that 
please you ? If I do what you desire most — what he who is dead 
desired most — will that soften you ? ” 

“ What is it, Henry ? ” says she, her face lighting up ; “ what 
mean you?” 

“ Ask no questions,” he said ; “ wait, and give me but time ; if 
I bring back that you long for, that I have a thousand times heard 
you pray for, will you have no reward for him who has done you 
that service ? Put away those trinkets, keep them : it shall not be 
at my marriage, it shall not be at yours ; but if man can do it, I 
swear a day shall come when there shall be a feast in your house, 
and you shall be proud to wear them. I say no more now ; put 
aside these words, and lock away yonder box until the day when I 
shall remind you of both. All I pray of you now is, to wait and 
to remember.” 

“You are going out of the country?” says Beatrix, in some 
agitation. 

“Yes, to-morrow,” says Esmond. 

“ To Lorraine, cousin ? ” says Beatrix, laying her hand on his 
arm ; ’twas the hand on which she wore the Duke’s bracelet. “ Stay, 
Harry ! ” continued she, with a tone that had more despondency in 
it than she was accustomed to show. “ Hear a last word. I do 
love you. I do admire you — who would not, that has known such 
love as yours has been for us all ? But I think I have no heart ; 
at least, I have never seen the man that could touch it ; and, had 
I found him, I would have followed him in rags had he been a 
private soldier, or to sea, like one of those buccaneers you used to 
read to us about when we were children. I would do anything 
for such a man, bear anything for him : but I never found one. 
You were ever too much of a slave to win my heart; even my 
Lord Duke could not command it. I had not been happy had I 
married him. I knew that three months after our engagement — 


360 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

and was too vain to break it. 0 Harry ! I cried once or twice, 
not for him, but with tears of rage because I could not be sorry 
for him. I was frightened to find I was glad of his death ; and 
were I joined to you, I should have the same sense of servitude, 
the same longing to escape. We should both be unhappy, and you 
the most, who are as jealous as the Duke was himself. I tried 
to love liim ; I tried, indeed I did : affected gladness when he 
came ; submitted to hear when he was by me, and tried the wife’s 
part I thought I was to play for the rest of my days. But lialf- 
an-hour of that complaisance wearied me, and what would a lifetime 
be ? My thoughts were away when he was speaking ; and I was 
thinking. Oh that this man would drop my hand, and rise up from 
before my feet ! I knew his great and noble qualities, greater and 
nobler than mine a thousand times, as yours are, cousin, I tell you, 
a million and a million times better. But ’twas not for these I took 
him. I took him to have a great place in the world, and I lost 
it. I lost it, and do not deplore him — and I often thought, as 
I listened to his fond vows and ardent words. Oh, if I yield to 
this man and meet the other, I shall hate him and leave him ! I 
am not good, Harry : my mother is gentle and good like an angel. 
I wonder how she should have had such a child. She is weak, 
but she would die rather than do a wrong ; I am stronger tlian she, 
but I would do it out of defiance. I do not care for what the 
parsons tell me with their droning sermons : I used to see them 
at Court as mean and as worthless as the meanest woman there. 
Oh, I am sick and weary of the world ! I wait but for one thing, 
and when ’tis done, I will take Frank’s religion and your poor 
mother’s and go into a nunnery, and end like her. Shall I wear the 
diamonds then? — they say the nuns wear their best trinkets the 
day they take the veil. I will put them away as you bid me. 
Farewell, cousin : mamma is pacing the next room, racking her 
little head to know what we have been saying. She is jealous : 
all women are. I sometimes think that is the 'only womanly 
quality I have.” 

“ Farewell. Farewell, brother.” She gave him her cheek as 
a brotherly privilege. The cheek was as cold as marble. 

Esmond’s mistress showed no signs of jealousy when he returned 
to the room where she was. She had schooled herself so as to 
look quite inscrutably, when she had a mind. Amongst her other 
feminine qualities she had that of being a perfect dissembler. 

He rid away from Castlewood to attempt the task he was 
bound on, and stand or fall by it ; in truth his state of mind was 
such, that he was eager for some outward excitement to counteract 
that gnawing malady which he was inwardly enduring. 


CHAPTER VIII 


I TRAVEL TO FRANCE AND BRING HOME A PORTRAIT 
OF RIGAUD 

M r. ESMOND did not think fit to take leave at Court, or to 
inform all the world of Pall Mall and the coffee-houses, that 
he was about to quit England ; and chose to depart in the 
most private manner possible. He procured a pass as for a French- 
man, through Doctor Atterbury, who did that business for him, 
getting the signature even from Lord Bolingbroke’s office, without 
any personal application to the Secretary. Lockwood, his faithful 
servant, he took with him to Castlewood, and left behind there : 
giving out ere he left London that he himself was sick, and gone to 
Hampshire for country air, and so departed as silently as might be 
upon his business. 

As Frank Castlewood’s aid was indispensable for Mr. Esmond’s 
scheme, his first visit was to Bruxelles (passing by way of Antwerp, 
where the Duke of Marlborough was in exile), and in the first- 
named place Harry found his dear young Benedict, the married 
man, who appeared to be rather out of humour with his matrimonial 
chain, and clogged with the obstinate embraces which Clotilda kept 
around his neck. Colonel Esmond was not presented to her; but 
Monsieur Simon was, a gentleman of the Royal Cravat (Esmond 
bethought him of the regiment of his honest Irishman, whom he had 
seen that day after Malplaquet, when he first set eyes on the young 
King) ; and Monsieur Simon was introduced to the Viscountess 
Castlewood, ne'e Comptesse Wertheim; to the numerous Counts, 
the Lady Clotilda’s tall brothers ; to her father the Chamberlain ; 
and to the lady his wife, Frank’s mother-in-law, a tall and majestic 
person of large proportions, such as became the mother of such a 
company of grenadiers as her warlike sons formed. The whole race 
were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which 
Frank had taken ; rode his horses ; drank his wine ; and lived easily 
at the poor lad’s charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a 
perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue ; and if 
this family (that Tspoke French with the twang which the Flemings 
use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon’s pronunciation, ’twas 


362 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

to be attributed to the latter’s long residence in England, where he 
had married and remained . ever since he was taken prisoner at 
Blenheim. His story was perfectly pat ; there were none there to 
doubt it save honest Frank, and he was charmed with his kinsman’s 
scheme, when he became acquainted with it ; and, in truth, always 
admired Colonel Esmond with an affectionate fidelity, and thought 
his cousin the wisest and best of all cousins and men. Frank 
entered heart and soul into the plan, and liked it the better as it 
was to take him to Paris, out of reach of his brothers, his father, 
and his mother-in-law, whose attentions rather fatigued him. 

Castlewood, I have said, was born in the same year as the 
Prince of Wales ; had not a little of the Prince’s air, height, and 
figure ; and, especially since he had seen the Chevalier de St. George 
on the occasion before-named, took no small pride in his resemblance 
to a person so illustrious ; which likeness he increased by all means 
in his power, wearing fair brown periwigs, such as the Prince wore, 
and ribands, and so forth, of the Chevalier’s colour. 

This resemblance was, in truth, the circumstance on which Mr. 
Esmond’s scheme was founded ; and having secured Frank’s secrecy 
and enthusiasm, he left him to continue his journey, and see the 
other personages on whom its success depended. The place whither 
Mr. Simon next travelled was Bar, in Lorraine, where that merchant 
arrived with a consignment of broadcloths, valuable laces from 
Malines, and letters for his correspondent there. 

Would you know how a prince, heroic from misfortunes, and 
descended from a line of kings, whose race seemed to be doomed 
like the Atridse of old — would you know how he was employed, 
when the envoy who came to him through danger and difficulty 
beheld him for the first time ? The young King, in a flannel jacket, 
was at tennis with the gentlemen of his suite, crying out after the 
balls, and swearing like the meanest of his subjects. The next 
time Mr. Esmond saw him, ’twas when Monsieur Simon took a 
packet of laces to Miss Oglethorpe : the Prince’s antechamber in 
those days, at which ignoble door men were forced to knock for 
admission to his Majesty. The admission was given, tlie envoy 
found the King and the mistress together : the pair were at cards, 
and his Majesty was in liquor. He cared more for three honours 
than three kingdoms ; and a half-dozen glasses of ratafia made him 
forget all his woes and his losses, his father’s crown, and his grand- 
father’s head. 

Mr. Esmond did not open himself to the Prince then. His 
Majesty was scarce in a condition to hear him; and he doubted 
whether a King who drank so much could keep a secret in his 
fuddled head ; or whether a hand that shook so, was strong enough 


THE PRINCE 


S63 


to gi'asp at a crown. However, at last, and after taking counsel 
with the Prince’s advisers, amongst whom were many gentlemen, 
honest and faithful, Esmond’s plan was laid before the King, and 
her actual Majesty Queen Oglethorpe, in counsel. The Prince liked 
the scheme well enough : ’twas easy and daring, and suited to his 
reckless gaiety and lively youthful spirit. In the morning after he 
had slept his wine off he was very gay, lively, and agreeable. His 
manner had an extreme charm of archness, and a kind simplicity ; 
and, to do her justice, her Oglethorpean Majesty was kind, acute, 
resolute, and of good counsel ; she gave the Prince much good advice 
that he was too weak to follow, and loved him with a fidelity which 
he returned with an ingratitude quite Royal. 

Having his own forebodings regarding his scheme should it ever 
be fulfilled, and his usual sceptic doubts as to the benefit which 
might accrue to the country by bringing a tipsy young monarch 
back to it. Colonel Esmond had his audience of leave, and quiet 
Monsieur Simon took his departure. At any rate the youth at Bar 
was as good as the older Pretender at Hanover ; if the worst came 
to the worst, the Englishman could be dealt with as easy as the 
German. Monsieur Simon trotted on that long journey from Nancy 
to Paris, and saw that famous town, stealthily and like a spy, as in 
truth he was ; and where, sure, more magnificence and more misery 
is heaped together, more rags and lace, more filth and gilding, than 
in any city in this world. Here he was put in communication with 
the King’s best friend, his half-brother, the famous Duke of Berwick; 
Esmond recognised him as the stranger who had visited Castlewood 
now near twenty years ago. His Grace opened to him when he 
found that Mr. Esmond was one of Webb’s brave regiment, that 
had once been his Grace’s own. He was the sword and buckler 
indeed of the Stuart cause ; there was no stain on his shield except 
the bar across it, which Marlborough’s sister left him. Had Berwick 
been his father’s heir, James the Third had assuredly sat on the 
English throne. He could dare, endure, strike, speak, be silent. 
The fire and genius, perhaps, he had not (that were given to baser 
men), but except these he had some of the best qualities of a leader. 
His Grace knew Esmond’s father and history ; and hinted at the 
latter in such a way as made the Colonel to think he was aware of 
the particulars of that story. But Esmond did not choose to enter 
on it, nor did the Duke press him. Mr. Esmond said, “No doubt 
he should come by his name if ever greater people came by theirs.” 

What confirmed Esmond in his notion that the Duke of Berwick 
knew of his case was, that when the Colonel went to pay his duty 
at St. Germains, her Majesty once addressed him by the title of 
Marquis. He took the Queen the dutiful remembrances of her 


364 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

goddaughter, and the lady whom, in the days of her prosperity, 
her Majesty had befriended. The Queen remembered Rachel 
Esmond perfectly well, had heard of my Lord Castlewood’s con- 
version, and was much edified by that act of Heaven in his favour. 
She knew that others of that family had been of the only true 
Church too : “ Your father and your mother, M. le Marquis,” 
her Majesty said (that was the only time she used the phrase). 
Monsieur Simon bowed very low, and said he had found other 
parents than his own, who had taught him differently ; but these 
had only one King : on which her Majesty was pleased to give 
him a medal blessed by the Pope, which had been found very 
efficacious in cases similar to his own, and to promise she would 
offer up prayers for his conversion and that of the family : which 
no doubt this pious lady did, though up to the present moment, 
and after twenty-seven years. Colonel Esmond is bound to say that 
neither the medal nor the prayers have had the slightest known 
effect upon his religious convictions. 

As for the splendours of Versailles, Monsieur Simon, the 
merchant, only beheld them as a humble and distant spectator, 
seeing the old King but once, when he went to feed his carps : and 
asking for no presentation at his Majesty’s Court. 

By this time my Lord Viscount Castlewood was got to Paris, 
where, as the London prints presently announced, her Ladyship 
was brought to bed of a son and heir. For a long while afterwards 
she was in a delicate state of health, and ordered by the physicians 
not to travel ; otherwise ’twas well known that the Viscount 
Castlewood proposed returning to England, and taking up his 
residence at his own seat. 

Whilst he remained at Paris, my Lord Castlewood had his 
picture done by the famous French painter. Monsieur Rigaud, a 
present for his mother in London ; and this piece Monsieur Simon 
took back with him when he returned to that city, which he 
reached about May, in the year 1714, very soon after which time 
my Lady Castlewood and her daughter, and their kinsman. Colonel 
Esmond, who had been at Castlewood all this time, likewise returned 
to London ; her Ladyship occupying her house at Kensington, Mr. 
Esmond returning to his lodgings at Knightsbridge, nearer the town, 
and once more making his appearance at all public places, his health 
greatly improved by his long stay in the country. 

The portrait of my Lord, in -a handsome gilt frame, was hung 
up in the place of honour in her Ladyship’s drawing-room. His 
Lordship was represented in his scarlet uniform of Captain of the 
Guard, with a light brown periwig, a cuirass under his coat, a blue 
riband, and a fall of Bruxelles lace. Many of her Ladyship’s 


THE PICTURE FROM PARIS 


365 


friends admired the piece beyond measure, and flocked to see it ; 
Bishop Atterbury, Mr. Lesly, good old Mr. Collier, and others 
amongst the clergy, were delighted with the performance, and many 
among the first quality examined and praised it ; only I must own 
that Doctor Tusher happening to come up to London, and seeing 
the picture (it was ordinarily covered by a curtain, but on this day 
Miss Beatrix happened to be looking at it when the Doctor arrived), 
the Vicar of Castlewood vowed he could not see any resemblance 
in the piece to his old pupil, except, perhaps, a little about the chin 
and the periwig ; but we all of us convinced him that he had not 
seen Frank for five years or more ; that he knew no more about 
the Fine Arts than a ploughboy, and that he must be mistaken ; 
and we sent him home assured that the piece was an excellent 
likeness. As for my Lord Bolingbroke, who honoured her Ladyship 
with a visit occasionally, when Colonel Esmond showed him the 
picture he burst out laughing, and asked what devilry he was 
engaged on ? Esmond owned simply that the portrait was not that 
of Viscount Castlewood ; besought the Secretary on his honour to 
keep the secret; said that the ladies of the house were enthusiastic 
Jacobites, as was well known ; and confessed that the picture w^as 
that of the Chevalier St. George. 

The truth is, that Mr. Simon, waiting upon Lord Castlewood 
one day at Monsieur Rigaud’s, whilst his Lordship was sitting for 
his picture, affected to be much struck with a piece representing 
the Chevalier, whereof the head only was finished, and purchased 
it of the painter for a hundred crowns. It had been intended, the 
artist said, for Miss Oglethorpe, the Prince’s mistress, but that 
young lady quitting Paris, had left the work on the artist’s hands ; 
and taking this piece home, when my Lord’s portrait arrived. 
Colonel Esmond, alias Monsieur Simon, had copied the uniform and 
other accessories from my Lord’s picture to fill up Rigaud’s in- 
complete canvas : the Colonel all his life having been a practitioner 
of painting, and especially followed it during his long residence in 
the cities of Flanders, among the masterpieces of Vandyck and 
Rubens. My grandson hath the piece, such as it is, in Virginia 
now. 

At the commencement of the month of June, Miss Beatrix 
Esmond, and my Lady Viscountess, her mother, arrived from 
Castlewood ; the former to resume her services at Court, which had 
been interrupted by the fatal catastrophe of Duke Hamilton’s death. 
She once more took her place, then, in her Majesty’s suite and at 
the Maids’ table, being always a favourite with Mrs. Masham, the 
Queen’s chief woman, partly perhaps on account of their bitterness 
against the Duchess of Marlborough, whom Miss Beatrix loved no 


366 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


better than her rival did. The gentlemen about the Court, my 
Lord Bolingbroke amongst others, owned that the young lady had 
come back handsomer than ever, and that the serious and tragic 
air which her face now involuntarily wore became her better than 
her former smiles and archness. 

All the old domestics at the little house of Kensington Square 
were changed ; the old steward that had served the family any 
time these five-and-twenty years, since the birth of the children of 
the house, was despatched into the kingdom of Ireland to see my 
Lord’s estate there; the housekeeper, who had been my Lady’s 
woman time out of mind, and the attendant of the young children, 
was sent away grumbling to Walcote, to see to the new painting 
and preparing of that house, which my Lady Dowager intended to 
occupy for the future, giving up Castlewood to her daughter-in-law 
that might be expected daily from France. Another servant the 
Viscountess had was dismissed too — with a gratuity — on the pretext 
that her Ladyship’s train of domestics must be diminished; so, 
finally, there was not left in the household a single person who had 
belonged to it during the time my young Lord Castlewood was yet 
at home. 

For the plan which Colonel Esmond had in view, and the stroke 
he intended, ’twas necessary that the very smallest number of 
persons should be put in possession of his secret. It scarce was 
known, except to three or four out of his family, and it was kept 
to a wonder. 

On the 10th of June 1714, there came by Mr. Prior’s mes- 
senger from Paris a letter from my Lord Viscount Castlewood to 
his mother, saying that he had been foolish in regard of money 
matters, that he was ashamed to own he had lost at play, and by 
other extravagances ; and that, instead- of having great entertain- 
ments as he had hoped at Castlewood this year, he must live as 
quiet as he could, and make every effort to be saving. So far every 
word of poor Frank’s letter was true, nor was there a doubt that 
he and his tall brothers-in-law had spent a great deal more than 
they ought, and engaged the revenues of the Castlewood property, 
which the fond mother had husbanded and improved so carefully 
during the time of her guardianship. 

His “ Clotilda,” Castlewood went on to say, “ was still delicate, 
and the physicians thought her lying-in had best take place at 
Paris. He should come without her Ladyship, and be at his 
mother’s house about the 17th or 18th day of June, proposing to 
take horse from Paris immediately, and bringing but a single servant 
with him ; and he requested that the lawyers of Gray’s Inn might 
be invited to meet him with their account, and the land-steward 


A LETTER AVITHIN A LETTER 


367 

come from Castlewood with his, so that he might settle with 
them speedily, raise a sum of money whereof he stood in need, 
and be back to his viscountess by the time of her lying-in.” 
Then his Lordship gave some of the news of the town, sent 
his remembrance to kinsfolk, and so the letter ended. ’Twas 
put in the common post, and no doubt the French police and 
the English there had a copy of it, to which they were exceeding 
welcome. 

Two days after another letter was despatched by the public 
post of France, in the same open way, and this, after giving news 
of the fashion at Court there, ended by the folloAving sentences, in 
which, but for those that had the key, ’twould be difficult for any 
man to find any secret lurked at all ; — 

“ (The King will take) medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is 
better than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion 
from his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. 
They hnYe performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr. The 
Duke of Shrewsbury and Mr. Prior, our envoy, and all the English 
nobility here, were present at it. (The Viscount Castlewood’s pass- 
ports) Avere refused to him, ’twas said ; his Lordship being sued by 
a goldsmith for Vaisselle plate, and a pearl necklace supplied to 
Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. ’Tis a pity such news 
should get abroad (and travel to England) about our young nobility 
here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to the Fort I’Evesque ; 
they say she has ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a chariot 
and horses (under that lord’s name), of which extravagance his 
unfortunate Viscountess knows nothing. 

“ (His Majesty AAill be) eiglity-two years of age on his next 
birthday. The Court prepares to celebrate it with a great feast. 
Mr. Prior is in a sad way about their refusing at home to send him 
his plate. All here admired my Lord Viscount’s portrait, and said 
it was a masterpiece of Rigaud. Have you seen it? It is (at 
the Lady Castlewmod’s house in Kensington Square). I think no 
English painter could produce such a piece. 

“ Our poor friend the Abbd hath been at the Bastile, but is noAv 
transported to the Conciergerie (where his friends may visit him. 
They are to ask for) a remission of his sentence soon. Let us hope 
the poor rogue will have repented in prison. 

“ (The Lord CastleAvood) has had the affair of the plate made 
up, and departs for England. 

“Is not this a dull letter? I have a cursed headache AAuth 
drinking Avith Mat and some more over-night, and tipsy or sober am 

“ Thine ever 


368 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

All this letter save some dozen of words whieh I have put 
above between brackets, was mere idle talk, though the substance 
of the letter was as important as any letter well could be. It told 
those that had the key, that The King will take the Viscount 
Castlewoo(Ts pass 2 )orts and travel to England under that loy'Ts 
name, llis Majesty will he at the Lady CastleivooT s house in 
Kensington Square^ where his friends may visit him. They are 
to ash for the Lord Castlewood. This note may have passed under 
Mr. Prior’s eyes, and those of our new allies the French, and taught 
them nothing ; though it explains sufficiently to persons in London 
what the event was which was about to happen, as ’twill show 
those who read my memoirs a hundred years hence, what was that 
errand on which Colonel Esmond of late had been busy. Silently 
and swiftly to do that about which others were conspiring, and 
thousands of Jacobites all over the country clumsily caballing; 
alone to effect that which the leaders here were only talking about ; 
to bring the Prince of Wales into the country openly in the face 
of all, under Bolingbroke’s very eyes, the walls placarded with the 
proclamation signed with the Secretary’s name, and offering five 
hundred pounds reward for his apprehension : this was a stroke, 
the playing and winning of which might well give any adventurous 
spirit pleasure : the loss of the stake might involve a heavy penalty, 
but all our family were eager to risk that for the glorious chance 
of winning the game. 

Nor should it be called a game, save perhaps with the chief 
player, who was not more or less sceptical than most public men 
with whom he had acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a 
public man in England that altogether believes in his party ? Is 
there one, however doubtful, that will not fight for it*?) Young 
Frank was ready to fight without much thinking ; he was a Jacobite 
as his father before him was; all the Esmonds were Royalists. 
Give him but the word, he would cry, “ God save King James ! ” 
before the palace guard, or at the Maypole in the Strand; and 
with respect to the women, as is usual with them, ’twas not a 
question of party but of faith : their belief was a passion ; either 
Esmond’s mistress or her daughter would have died for it cheerfully. 
I have laughed often, talking of King William’s reign, and said I 
thought Lady Castlewood was disappointed the King did not per- 
secute the family more ; and those who know the nature of women 
may fancy for themselves, what needs not here be written down, 
the rapture with which these neophytes received the mystery when 
made known to them ; the eagerness with which they looked for- 
ward to its completion ; the reverence which they paid the minister 
who initiated them into that secret Truth, now known only to a 


A KNOT OF CONSPIRATORS 369 

few, but presently to reign over the world. Sure there is no bound 
to the trustingness of women. Look at Arria worshipping the 
drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her; look at Cornelia 
treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her son. I 
have known a woman preach Jesuit’s bark, and afterwards Dr. 
Berkeley’s tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine 
decree, and to refuse them no better than blasphemy. 

On his return from France Colonel Esmond put himself at the 
head of this little knot of fond conspirators. No death or torture 
he knew would frighten them out of their constancy. When he 
detailed his plan for bringing the King back, his elder mistress 
thought that that Restoration was to be attributed under Heaven 
to the Castlewood family and to its chief, and she worshipped and 
loved Esmond, if that could be, more than ever she had done. 
She doubted not for one moment of the success of his scheme, to 
mistrust which would have seemed impious in her eyes. And as 
for Beatrix, when she became acquainted with the plan, and joined 
it, as she did with all her heart, she gave Esmond one of her 
searching bright looks. “ Ah, Harry,” says she, “ why were you 
not the head of our house 1 You are the only one fit to raise it ; 
why do you give that silly boy the name and the honour ? But 
’tis so in the world : those get the prize that don’t deserve or 
care for it. I wish I could give you your silly prize, cousin, but 
I can’t ; I have tried, and I can’t.” And she went away, shaking 
her head mournfully, but always, it seemed to Esmond, that her 
liking and respect for him was greatly increased, since she knew 
what capability he had both to act and bear ; to do and to forego. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE ORIGINAL OF THE PORTRAIT COMES TO ENGLAND 
WAS announced in the family that my Lord Castlewood 



would arrive, having a confidential French gentleman in his 


^ suite, who acted as secretary to his Lordship, and who, 
being a Papist, and a foreigner of a good family, though now in 
rather a menial place, would have his meals served in his chamber, 
and not with the domestics of the house. The Viscountess gave 
up her bedchamber contiguous to her daughter’s, and having a 
large convenient closet attached to it, in which a bed was put up, 
ostensibly for Monsieur Baptiste, the Frenchman ; though, ’tis 
needless to say, when the doors of the apartments were locked, and 
the two guests retired within it, the young Viscount became the 
servant of the illustrious Prince whom he entertained, and gave up 
gladly the more convenient and airy chamber and bed to his master. 
Madam Beatrix also retired to the upper region, her chamber being 
converted into a sitting-room for my Lord. The better to carry 
the deceit, Beatrix affected to grumble before the servants, and to 
be jealous that she was turned out of her chamber to make way 
for my Lord. 

No small preparations were made, you may be sure, and no 
slight tremor of expectation caused the hearts of the gentle ladies 
of Castlewood to flutter, before the arrival of the personages who 
were about to honour their house. The chamber was ornamented 
with flowers ; the bed covered with the very finest of linen ; the 
two ladies insisting on making it themselves, and kneeling down at 
the bedside and kissing the sheets out of respect for the web that 
was to hold the sacred person of a King. The toilet was of silver 
and crystal ; there was a copy of “ Eikon Basilik4 ” laid on the 
writing-table ; a portrait of the martyred King hung always over 
the mantel, having a sword of my poor Lord Castlewood under- 
neath it, and a little picture or emblem which the widow loved 
always to have before her eyes on waking, and in which the hair 
of her lord and her two children was worked together. Her books 
of private devotions, as they were all of the English Church, she 
carried away with her to the upper apartment, which she destined 


PREPARATIONS FOR A GUEST 371 

for herself. The ladies showed Mr. Esmond, when they were com- 
pleted, the fond preparations they had made. ’Twas then Beatrix 
knelt down and kissed the linen sheets. As for her mother. Lady 
Castlewood made a curtsey at the door, as she would have done 
to the altar on entering a church, and owned that she considered 
the chamber in a manner sacred. 

The company in the servants’ hall never for a moment supposed 
that these preparations were made for any other person than the 
young Viscount, the lord of the house, whom his fond mother had 
been for so many years without seeing. Both ladies were perfect 
housewives, having the greatest skill in the making of confections, 
scented waters, &c., and keeping a notable superintendence over the 
kitchen. Calves enough were killed to feed an army of prodigal 
sons, Esmond thought, and laughed when he came to wait on the 
ladies, on the day when the guests were to arrive, to find two pairs 
of the finest and roundest arms to be seen in England (my Lady 
Castlewood was remarkable for this beauty of her x>erson), covered 
with flour up above the elbows, and preparing paste, and turning 
rolling-pins in the housekeeper’s closet. The guest would uot 
arrive till supper-time, and my Lord would prefer having that meal 
in his own chamber. You may be sure the brightest plate of the 
house was laid out there, and can understand why it was that the 
ladies insisted that they alone would wait upon the young chief 
of the family. 

Taking horse. Colonel Esmond rode rapidly to Rochester, and 
there awaited the King in that very town where his father had 
last set his foot on the English shore. A room had been provided 
at an inn there for my Lord Castlewood and his servant; and 
Colonel Esmond timed his ride so well that he had scarce been 
half-an-hour in the place, and Avas looking over the balcony into 
the yard of the inn, when two travellers rode in at the inn gate, 
and the Colonel running down, the next moment embraced his 
dear young lord. 

My Lord’s companion, acting the part of a domestic, dismounted, 
and was for holding the Viscount’s stirrup ; but Colonel Esmond, 
calling to his own man, who was in the court, bade him take the 
horses and settle with the lad who had ridden the post along with 
the two travellers, crying out in a cavalier tone in the French 
language to my Lord’s companion, and affecting to gimmble that 
my Lord’s fellow was a Frenchman, and did not know the money or 
habits of the country : — “ My man Avill see to the horses, Baptiste,” 
says Colonel Esmond : “ do you understand English 1 “ Very 

leetle.” “So, follow my Lord and wait upon him at dinner in 
his own room.” The landlord and his people came up presently 


372 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

bearing the dishes ; ’twas well they made a noise and stir in the 
gallery, or they might have found Colonel Esmond on his knee 
before Lord Castlewood’s servant, welcoming his Majesty to his 
kingdom, and kissing the hand of the King. We told the landlord 
that the Frenchman would wait on his master ; and Esmond’s man 
was ordered to keep sentry in the gallery without the door. The 
Prince dined with a good appetite, laughing and talking very gaily, 
and condescendingly bidding his two companions to sit with him 
at table. He was in better spirits than poor Frank Castlewood, 
who Esmond thought might be woebegone on account of parting 
with his divine Clotilda ; but the Prince wishing to take a short 
siesta after dinner, and retiring to an inner chamber where there 
was a bed, the cause of poor Frank’s discomfiture came out ; and 
bursting into tears, with many expressions of fondness, friendship, 
and humiliation, the faithful lad gave his kinsman to understand 
that he now knew all the truth, and the sacrifices which Colonel 
Esmond had made for him. 

Seeing no good in acquainting poor Frank with that secret, 
Mr. Esmond had entreated his mistress also not to reveal it to her 
son. The Prince had told the poor lad all as they were riding 
from Dover: “I had as lief he had shot me, cousin,” Frank said. 
“I knew you were the best, and the bravest, and the kindest of 
all men ” (so the enthusiastic young fellow went on) ; “ but I 
never thought I owed you what I do, and can scarce bear the 
weight of the obligation.” 

“ I stand in the place of your father,” says Mr. Esmond kindly, 
“ and sure a father may dispossess himself in favour of his son. I 
abdicate the twopenny crown, and invest you with the kingdom of 
Brentford ; don’t be a fool and cry ; you make a much taller and 
handsomer viscount than ever -I could.” But the fond boy, with 
oaths and protestations, laughter and incoherent outbreaks of 
passionate emotion, could not be got, for some little time, to put up 
with Esmond’s raillery ; wanted to kneel down to him, and kissed 
his hand ; asked him and implored him to order something, to bid 
Castlewood give his own life or take somebody else’s; anything, 
so that he might show his gratitude for the generosity Esmond 
showed him. 

“ The K , he laughed,” Frank said, pointing to the door 

where the sleeper was, and speaking in a low tone. “ I don’t think 
he should have laughed as he told me the story. As we rode along 
from Dover, talking in French, he spoke about you, and your coming 
to him at Bar ; he called you ‘ le grand sdrieux,’ Don Bellianis of 
Greece, and I don’t know what names ; mimicking your manner” 
/here Castlewood laughed himself) — “and he did it very well. 


FRANK’S GOOD HEART 


373 


He seems to sneer at everything. He is not like a king ; somehow, 
Harry, I fancy you are like a king. He does not seem to think 
what a stake we are all playing. He would have stopped at 
Canterbury to run after a barmaid there, had I not implored him 
to come on. He hath a house at Chaillot, where he used to go 
and bury himself for weeks away from the Queen, and with all 
sorts of bad company,” says Frank, with a demure look. “You 
may smile, but I am not the wild fellow I was ; no, no, I have 
been taught better,” says Castlewood devoutly, making a sign on 
his breast. 

“ Thou art my dear brave boy,” said Colonel Esmond, touched 
at the young fellow’s simplicity, “ and there will be a noble gentle- 
man at Castlewood so long as my Frank is there.” 

The impetuous young lad was for going down on his knees again, 
with another explosion of gratitude, but that we heard the voice 
from the next chamber of the august sleeper, just waking, calling 
out, “ Eh, La Fleur, un verre d’eau ! ” His Majesty came out 
yawning: — “A pest,” says he, “upon your English ale, ’tis so 
strong that, ma foi^ it hath turned my head.” 

The effect of the ale was like a spur upon our horses, and we 
rode very quickly to London, reaching Kensington at nightfall. 
Mr. Esmond’s servant was left behind at Rochester, to take care of 
the tired horses, whilst we had fresh beasts provided along the road. 
And galloping by the Prince’s side the Colonel explained to the 
Prince of Wales what his movements had been ; who the friends 
were that knew of the expedition; whom, as Esmond conceived, 
the Prince should trust ; entreating him, above all, to maintain the 
very closest secrecy until the time should come when his Royal 
Highness should appear. The town swarmed with friends of the 
Prince’s cause : there were scores of correspondents with St. 
Germains ; Jacobites known and secret ; great in station and 
humble; about the Court and the Queen; in the Parliament, 
Church, and among the merchants in the City. The Prince had 
friends numberless in the army, in the Privy Council, and the 
Officers of State. The great object, as it seemed, to the small band 
of persons who had concerted that bold stroke, who had brought 
the Queen’s brother into his native country, was, that his visit 
should remain unknown till the proper time came, when his pre- 
sence should surprise friends and enemies alike ; and the latter 
should be found so unprepared and disunited, that they should not 
find time to attack him. We feared more from his friends than from 
his enemies. The lies and tittle-tattle sent over to St. Germains by 
the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable mischief 
to his cause, and woefully misguided him, and it was from these 


374 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

especially, that the persons engaged in the present venture were 
anxious to defend the chief actor in it.* 

The party reached London by nightfall, leaving their horses 
at the Posting-House over against Westminster, and being ferried 
over the water, where Lady Esmond’s coach was already in waiting. 
In another hour we were all landed at Kensington, and tlie mistress 
of the house had that satisfaction which her heart had yearned after 
for many years, once more to embrace her son, who, on his side, 
with all his waywardness, ever retained a most tender affection for 
his parent. 

She did not refrain from this expression of her feeling, though 
the domestics were by, and my Lord Castlewood’s attendant stood 
in the hall. Esmond had to whisper to him in French to take his 
hat off. Monsieur Baptiste was constantly neglecting his part with 
an inconceivable levity : more than once on the ride to London, 
little observations of the stranger, light remarks, and words betoken- 
ing the greatest ignorance of the country the Prince came to govern, 
had hurt the susceptibility of the two gentlemen forming his escort ; 
nor could either help owning in his secret mind that they would 
have had his behaviour otherwise, and that the laughter and the 
lightness, not to say licence, which characterised his talk, scarce 
befitted such a great Prince, and such a solemn occasion. Not but 
that he could act at proper times with spirit and dignity. He had 
behaved, as we all knew, in a very courageous manner on the field. 
Esmond had seen a copy of the letter the Prince had writ with his 
own hand when urged by his friends in England to abjure his 
religion, and admired that manly and magnanimous reply by which 
he refused to yield to the temptation. Monsieur Baptiste took off 
his hat, blushing at the hint Colonel Esmond ventured to give him, 
and said, “ Tenez, elle est jofie, la petite m^re. Foi de Chevalier ! 
elle est charmante ; mais I’autre, qui est cette nymphe, cet astre qui 
brille, cette Diane qui descend sur nousT’ And he started back, 
and pushed forward, as Beatrix was descending the stair. She 
was in colours for the first time at her own house ; she wore the 
diamonds Esmond gave her ; it had been agreed between them, that 
she should wear these brilliants on the day when the King should 
enter the house, and a queen she looked, radiant in charms, and 
magnificent and imperial in beauty. 

Castlewood himself was startled by that beauty and splendour ; 

* The managers were the Bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name 
mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist Divine, a lady in the highest 
favour at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two 
noblemen of the greatest rank, and a member of the House of Commons, who 
was implicated in more transactions than one in behalf of the Stuart family. 










'V.' 




•9 


'’-n 






'S 


: > 


» . 


< t 


. •*, .fc •» ■'♦♦ 


•/" I 




% ' 


-» 


:» V» ' 


t • 


. I 


•V 


' . r»' ‘'I ^'';^> 



T< 


V ♦ 


'.. -fj. 


* k # 

•. . . , . 
■v'v'.V' %’^v;' 

Wv \ 


r: 




,<•‘‘ 4 -; (•' ' 


<■ 



' • :v 

,.A(. 


\ 






• 7 S 


1 

t 

' ^ 

1 » 


it 

v 1 ' , ■^■. 



r?v 

i -r , 

r V ' , > , 

• ' 





>. -' » 



' 1^;' ■’'.iV'^/’Vx 'J 
;''V / :;-CV‘’'(‘ • ■ 

. • -f ’’.I'C, •<■ •'. fr. 

■ -< 


# • 


^ •> 


♦ yf ^ 

^ ■ 

• -wl. »V 


j 



*-4 




» 

- H, V 


> . i 

I i 


■' 

, > » ■ '■ 


'."j- 


, .. A^v- 


<r.\ ikS.sl, 

• ' ■•• I 

> I •{',>' 



4r. 


iv^ U • 



'*'1 


ft k 


THE CHIEF ACTOR FORGETS HIS PART 375 

he. stepped back and gazed at his sister as though he had not been 
aware before (nor was he very likely) how perfectly lovely she was, 
and I thought blushed as he embraced her. The Prince could not 
keep his eyes off her ; he quite forgot his menial part, though he 
had been schooled to it, and a little light portmanteau prepared 
expressly that he shoidd carry it. He pressed forward before my 
Lord Viscount. ’Twas lucky the servants’ eyes were busy in other 
directions, or they must have seen that this was no servant, or at 
least a very insolent and rude one. 

Again Colonel Esmond was obliged to cry out, “ Baptiste,” in 
a loud imperious voice, “ have a care to the valise ! ” at which hint 
the wilful young man ground his teeth together with something very 
like a curse between them, and then gave a brief look of anything 
but pleasure to his Mentor. Being reminded, however, he shouldered 
the little portmanteau, and carried it up the stair, Esmond preceding 
him, and a servant with lighted tapers. He flung down his burden 
sulkily in the bedchamber: — “A Prince that will wear a crown 
must wear a mask,” says Mr. Esmond in French. 

“ Ah peste ! I see how it is,” says Monsieur Baptiste, continuing 
the talk in French. “ The Great Serious is seriously ” — “ alarmed 
for Monsieur Baptiste,” broke in the Colonel. Esmond neither 
liked the tone with which the Prince spoke of the ladies, nor the 
eyes with which he regarded them. 

The bedchamber and the two rooms adjoining it, the closet and 
the apartment which was to be called my Lord’s parlour, were 
already lighted and awaiting their occupier ; and the collation laid 
for my Lord’s supper. Lord Castlewood and his mother and sister 
came up the stair a minute afterwards, and, so soon as the domestics 
had quitted the apartment, Castlewood and Esmond uncovered, and 
the two ladies went down on their knees before the Prince, who 
graciously gave a hand to each. He looked his part of Prince much 
more naturally than that of servant, which he had just been trying, 
and raised them both with a great deal of nobility, as well as kind- 
ness in his air. “ Madam,” says he, “ my mother will thank your 
Ladyship for your hospitality to her son ; for you, madam,” turning 
to Beatrix, “ I cannot bear to see so much beauty in such a posture. 
You will betray Monsieur Baptiste if you kneel to him ; sure ’tis 
his place rather to kneel to you.” 

A light shone out of her eyes ; a gleam bright enough to kindle 
passion in any breast. There were times when this creature was so 
handsome, that she seemed, as it were, like Venus revealing herself 
a goddess in a flash of brightness. She appeared so now ; radiant, 
and with eyes bright with a wonderful lustre. A pang, as of rage 
and jealousy, shot through Esmond’s heart, as he caught the look 


376 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

she gave the Prince ; and he clenched his hand involuntarily, and 
looked across to Castlewood, whose eyes answered his alarm-signal, 
and were also on the alert! The Prince gave his subjects an audience 
of a few minutes, and then the two ladies and Colonel Esmond 
quitted the chamber. Lady Castlewood pressed his hand as they 
descended the stair, and the three went down to the lower rooms, 
where they waited awhile till the travellers above should be refreshed 
and ready for their meal. 

Esmond looked at Beatrix, blazing with her jewels on her 
beautiful neck. “ I have kept my word,” says he. “ And I mine,” 
says Beatrix, looking down on the diamonds. 

“Were I the Mogul Emperor,” says the Colonel, “ you should 
have all that were dug out of Golconda.” 

“ These are a great deal too good for me,” says Beatrix, dropping 
her head on her beautiful breast, — “ so are you all, all ! ” And 
when she looked up again, as she did in a moment, and after a sigh, 
her eyes, as they gazed at her cousin, wore that melancholy and 
inscrutable look which ’twas always impossible to sound. 

When the time came for the supper, of which we were advertised 
by a knocking overhead. Colonel Esmond and the two ladies went 
to the upper apartment, where the Prince already was, and by his 
side the young Viscount, of exactly the same age, shape, and with 
features not dissimilar, though Frank’s were the handsomer of the 
two. The Prince sat down and bade the ladies sit. The gentlemen 
remained standing : there was, indeed, but one more cover laid at 
the table : — “ Which of you will take it 1 ” says he. 

“The head of our house,” says Lady Castlewood, taking her 
son’s hand, and looking towards Colonel Esmond with a bow and a 
great tremor of the voice; “the Marquis of Esmond will have the 
honour of serving the King.” 

“I shall have the honour of waiting on his Royal Highness,” 
says Colonel Esmond, filling a cup of_wine, and, as the fashion of 
that day was, he presented it to the King on his knee. 

“ I drink to my hostess and her family,” says the Prince, with 
no very well-pleased air ; but the cloud passed immediately off his 
face, and he talked to the ladies in a lively, rattling strain, quite 
undisturbed by poor Mr. Esmond’s yellow countenance, that, I dare 
say, looked very glum. 

When the time came to take leave, Esmond marched homewards 
to his lodgings, and met Mr. Addison on the road that night, 
walking to a cottage he had at Fulham, the moon shining on his 
handsome serene face: — “What cheer, brother 1” says Addison, 
laughing : “I thought it was a footpad advancing in the dark, and 
behold ’tis an old friend. We may shake hands, Colonel, in the 


THE DEED IS DONE 


377 

(lark ; ’tis better than fighting by daylight. Why should we quarrel, 
because I am a Whig and thou art a Tory ? Turn thy steps ami 
walk with me to Fulham, where there is a niglitingale still singing 
in the garden, and a cool bottle in a cave I know of; you shall 
drink to the Pretender if you like, and I will drink my liquor my 
own way : I have had enough of good liquor 1 — no, never ! There 
is no such word as enough as a stopper for good wine. Thou wilt 
not cornel Come any day, come soon. You know I remember 
Simois and the Sigeia telhis, and the prcBlia, mixta mero^ mixta 
mero,'' he repeated, with ever so slight a touch of merum in his 
voice, and walked back a little way on the road with Esmond, 
bidding the other remember he was always his friend, and indebted 
to him for his aid in the “ Campaign ” poem. And very likely Mr. 
Under-Secretary would have stepped in and taken t’other bottle at 
the Colonel’s lodging, had the latter invited him, but Esmond’s 
mood was none of the gayest, and he bade his friend an inhospitable 
good-night at the door. 

“ I have done the deed,” thought he, sleepless, and looking out 
into the night ; “he is here, and I have brought him ; he and 
Beatrix are .sleeping under the same roof now. Whom did I mean 
to serve in bringing him? Was it the Prince? was it Henry 
Esmond ? Had I not best have joined the manly creed of Addison 
yonder, that scouts the old doctrine of right divine, that boldly 
declares that Parliament and people consecrate the Sovereign, not 
bishops, nor genealogies, nor oils, nor coronations.” The eager gaze 
of the young Prince, watching every movement of Beatrix, haunted 
Esmond and pursued him. The Prince’s figure appeared before him 
in his feverish dreams many times that night. He wished the deed 
undone for which he had laboured so. He was not the first that 
has regretted his own act, or brought about his own undoing. 
Undoing? Should he write that word in his late years? No, on 
his knees before Heaven, rather be thankful for what then he 
deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent 
happiness of his life. 

Esmond’s man, honest John Lockwood, had served his master 
and the family all his life, and the Colonel knew that he could 
anjiwer for John’s fidelity as for his own. John returned with the 
horses from Rochester betimes the next morning, and the Colonel 
gave him to understand that on going to Kensington, where he was 
free of the servants’ hall, and indeed courting Miss Beatrix’s maid, 
he was to ask no questions, and betray no surprise, but to vouch 
stoutly that the young gentleman he should see in a red coat there 
was my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and that his attendant in grey 
was Monsieur Baptiste the Frenchman. He was to tell his friends 


378 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


in the kitchen such stories as he remembered of my Lord Viscount’s 
youth at Castlewood ; what a wild boy he was; how he used to 
drill Jack and cane him, before ever he was a soldier ; everything, 
in fine, he knew respecting my Lord Viscount’s early days. Jack’s 
ideas of painting had not been much cultivated during his residence 
in Flanders with his master ; and, before my young lord’s return, 
he had been easily got to believe that the picture brought over from 
Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood’s drawing-room, was a 
perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the domestics 
having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momen- 
tary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their 
arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait ; 
and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited 
exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, 
ribands, and uniform of the Guard, quite naturally addressed the 
gentleman as my Lord Castlewood, my Lady Viscountess’s son. 

The secretary of the night previous was now the Viscount ; the 
Viscount wore the secretary’s grey frock ; and John Lockwood was 
instructed to hint to the world below stairs that my Lord being a 
Papist, and very devout in that religion, his attendant might be no 
other than his chaplain from Bruxelles ; hence, if he took his meals 
in my Lord’s company there was little reason for surprise. Frank 
was further cautioned to speak English with a foreign accent, which 
task he performed indifferently well, and this caution was the more 
necessary because the Prince himself scarce spoke our language like 
a native of the island : and John Lockwood laughed with the folks 
below stairs at the manner in which my Lord, after five years 
abroad, sometimes forget his own tongue and spoke it like a French- 
man. “ I warrant,” says he, “ that with the English beef and beer, 
his Lordship will soon get back the proper use of his mouth ; ” and, 
to do his new lordship justice, he took to beer and beef very kindly. 

The Prince drank so much, and was so loud and imprudent in 
his talk after his drink, that Esmond often trembled for him. His 
meals were served as much as possible in his own chamber, though 
frequently he made his appearance in Lady Castlewood’s parlour 
and drawing-room, calling Beatrix “ sister,” and her Ladyship 
“mother,” or “madam,” before the servants. And, choosing to 
act entirely up to the part of brother and son, the Prince sometimes 
saluted Mrs. Beatrix and Lady Castlewood with a freedom which 
his secretary did not like, and which, for his part, set Colonel 
Esmond tearing with rage. 

The guests had not been ' three days in the house when poor 
Jack Lockwood came with a rueful countenance to his master, and 
said : “ My Lord — that is, the gentleman — has been tampering with 


MY REMONSTRANCES 


379 

Mrs. Lucy ” (Jack’s sweetheart), “ and given her guineas and a 
kiss.” I fear that Colonel Esmond’s mind was rather relieved than 
otherwise when he found that the ancillary beauty was the one 
whom the Prince had selected. His Royal tastes were known to 
lie that way, and continued so in after life. The heir of one of the 
greatest names, of the greatest kingdoms, and of the greatest mis- 
fortunes in Europe, was often content to lay the dignity of his birth 
and grief at the wooden shoes of a French chambermaid, and to 
repent afterwards (for he was very devout) in ashes taken from the 
dust-pan. ’Tis for mortals such as these that nations suffer, that 
parties struggle, that warriors fight and bleed. A year afterwards 
gallant heads were falling, and Nithsdale in escape, and Derwent- 
water on the scaffold ; whilst the heedless ingrate, for whom they 
risked and lost all, was tippling with his seraglio of mistresses in 
his petite maison of Chaillot. 

Blushing to be forced to bear such an errand, Esmond had 
to go to the Prince and warn him that the girl whom his Highness 
was bribing was John Lockwood’s sweetheart, an honest resolute 
man, who had served in six campaigns, and feared nothing, and 
who knew that the person calling himself Lord Castlewood was 
not his young master : and the Colonel besought the Prince to 
consider what the effect of a single man’s jealousy might be, and 
to think of other designs he had in hand, more important than the 
seduction of a waiting-maid, and the humiliation of a brave man. 

Ten times, perhaps, in the course of as many days, Mr. Esmond 
had to warn the royal young adventurer of some imx)rudence or 
some freedom. He received these remonstrances very testily, save 
perhaps in this affair of poor Lockwood’s, when he deigned to burst 
out a-laughing, and said, “What! the souhrette has peached to the 
amoureux, and Crispin is angry, and Crispin has served, and 
Crispin has been a corporal, has he 1 Tell him we will reward his 
valour with a pair of colours, and recompense his fidelity.” 

Colonel Esmond ventured to utter some other words of entreaty, 
but the Prince, stamping imperiously, cried out, “Assez, milord: 
je m’ennuye k la preche ; I am not come to London to go to the 
sermon.” And he complained afterwards to Castlewood, that “le 
petit jaune, le noir Colonel, le Marquis Misanthrope ” (by which 
facetious names his Royal Highness was pleased to designate 
Colonel Esmond), “ fatigued him with his grand airs and virtuous 
homilies.” 

The Bishop of Rochester, and other gentlemen engaged in the 
transaction which had brought the Prince over, waited upon his 
Royal Highness, constantly asking for my Lord Castlewood on 
their arrival at Kensington, and being openly conducted to his 


380 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Royal Highness in that character, who received them either in my 
Lady’s drawing-room below, or above in his own apartment ; and 
all implored him to quit the house as little as possible, and to wait 
there till the signal should be given for him to appear. The 
ladies entertained him at cards, over which amusement he spent 
many hours in each day and night. He passed many hours more 
in drinking, during which time he would rattle and talk very 
agreeably, and especially if the Colonel was absent, whose presence 
always seemed to frighten him; and the poor “Colonel Noir” took 
that hint as a command accordingly, and seldom intruded his black 
face upon the convivial hours of this august young prisoner. Except 
for those few persons of whom the porter had the list. Lord Castle- 
wood was denied to all friends of the house who waited on his 

Lordship. The wound he had received had broke out again from 

his journey on horseback, so the world and the domestics were 

informed. And Doctor A ,* his pliysician (I shall not men- 

tion his name, but he was physician to the Queen, of the Scots 
nation, and a man remarkable for his benevolence as well as his 
wit), gave orders that he should be kept perfectly quiet until the 
wound should heal. With this gentleman, who was one of the 
most active and influential of our party, and the others before 
spoken of, the whole secret lay ; and it was kept with so much 
faithfulness, and the story we told so simple and natural, that there 
was no likelihood of a discovery except from the imprudence of the 
Prince himself, and an adventurous levity that we had the greatest 
difficulty to control. As for Lady Castlewood, although she scarce 
spoke a word, ’twas easy to gather from her demeanour, and one or 
two hints she dropped, how deep her mortification was at finding 
the hero whom she had chosen to worship all her life (and whose 
restoration had formed almost the most sacred part of her prayers), 
no more than a man, and not a good one. She thought misfortune 
might have chastened him ; but that instructress had rather 
rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite 
real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed 
good-humour, gaiety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in 
his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine 
devotees with whom he had been bred, and that shocked the 
simplicity and purity of the English lady, whose guest he was. 
Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about the Prince, 
getting her brother to put in 'a word of warning. Beatrix was 
entirely of their opinion ; she thought he was very light, very light 
and reckless ; she could not even see the good looks Colonel Esmond 

* There can be very little doubt that the Doctor mentioned by my dear 
father was the famous Doctor Arbuthnot. — R. E. W. 


OUR GUESTS AMUSEMENTS 381 

had spoken of. The Prince had bad teeth, and a decided squint. 
How could we say he did not squint? His eyes were fine, but 
there was certainly a cast in them. She rallied him at table with 
wonderful wit ; she spoke of him invariably as of a mere boy ; she 
was more fond of Esmond than ever, praised him to her brother, 
praised him to the Prince, when his Royal Highness was pleased to 
sneer at the Colonel, and warmly espoused his cause : “ And if 
your Majesty does not give him the Garter his father had, when 
the Marquis of Esmond comes to your Majesty’s Court, I will hang 
myself in my own garters, or will cry my eyes out.” “ Rather than 
lose those,” says the Prince, “he shall be made Archbishop and 
Colonel of the Guard ” (it was Frank Castlewood who told me of 
this conversation over their supper). 

“Yes,” cries she, with one of her laughs — I fancy I hear it now. 
Thirty years afterwards I hear that delightful music. “Yes, he 
shall be Archbishop of Esmond and Marquis of Canterbury.” 

“And what will your Ladyship be?” says the Prince; “you 
have but to choose your place.” 

“I,” says Beatrix, “will be mother of the maids to the Queen 
of his Majesty King James the Third — Vive le Roy ! ” and she 
made him a great curtsey, and drank a part of a glass of wine in 
his honour. 

“ The Prince seized hold of the glass and drank the last drop of 
it,” Castlewood said, “ and my mother, looking very anxious, rose up 
and asked leave to retire. But that Trix is my mother’s daughter, 
Harry,” Frank continued, “ I don’t know what a horrid fear I should 
have of her. I wish — I wish this business were over. You are 
older than I am, and wiser, and better, and I owe you everything, 
and would die for you — before George I would ; but I wish the end 
of this were come.” 

Neither of us very likely passed a tranquil night; horrible 
doubts and torments racked Esmond’s soul ; ’twas a scheme of 
personal ambition, a daring stroke for a selfish end — he knew it. 
What cared he, in his heart, who was king? Were not his very 
sympathies and secret convictions on the other side — on the side of 
People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he, engaged for a 
Prince that had scarce heard the word liberty ; that priests and 
women, tyrants by nature, both made a tool of. The misanthrope 
was in no better humour after hearing that story, and his grim face 
more black and yellow than ever. 


CHAPTER X 


IVE ENTERTAIN A VERY DISTINGUISHED GUEST AT 
KENSINGTON 

TOULD any clue be found to the dark intrigues at the latter 



end of Queen Anne’s time, or any historian be inclined to 


follow it, ’twill be discovered, I have little doubt, that not 
one of the great personages about the Queen had a defined scheme 
of policy, independent of that private and selfish interest which 
each was bent on pursuing: St. John was for St. John, and Harley 
for Oxford, and Marlborough for J ohn Churchill, always ; and 
according as they could get helj) from St. Germains or Hanover, 
they sent over proffers of allegiance to the princes there, or betrayed 
one to the other: one cause, or one sovereign, was as good as 
another to them, so that they could hold tlie best place under him ; 
and, like Lockit and Peachum, the Newgate chiefs in the “Rogue’s 
Opera ” Mr. Gay wrote afterwards, had each in his hand documents 
and proofs of treason which would hang the other, only he did not 
dare to use the weapon, for fear of that one which his neighbour 
also carried in his pocket. Think of the great Marlborough, the 
greatest subject in all the world, a conqueror of princes, that had 
marched victorious over Germany, Flanders, and France, that had 
given the law to sovereigns abroad, and been worshipped as a 
divinity at home, forced to sneak out of England — his credit, 
honours, places, all taken from him ; his friends in the army broke 
and ruined; and flying before Harley, as abject and powerless as 
a poor debtor before a bailiff with a writ. A paper, of which 
Harley got possession, and showing beyond doubt that the Duke 
was engaged with the Stuart family, was the weapon with which 
the Treasurer drove Marlborough out of the kingdom. He fled to 
Antwerp, and began intriguing instantly on the other side, and 
came back to England, as all know, a Whig and a Hanoverian. 

Though the Treasurer turned out of the army and office every 
man, military or civil, known to be the Duke’s friend, and gave 
the vacant posts among the Tory party ; he, too, was playing the 
double game between Hanover and St. Germains, awaiting the 
expected catastrophe of the Queen’s death to be Master of the 


ROGUES ALL 


383 


State, and offer it to either family that should bribe him best, or 
that the nation should declare for. Whichever the King was, 
Harley’s object was to reign over him ; and to this end he supplanted 
the former famous favourite, decried the actions of the war which 
had made Marlborough’s name illustrious, and disdained no more 
than the great fallen competitor of his, the meanest arts, flatteries, 
intimidations, that would secure his power. If the greatest satirist 
the world ever hath seen had writ against Harley, and not for him, 
what a history had he left behind of the last years of Queen Anne’s 
reign ! But Swift, that scorned all mankind, and himself not the 
least of all, liad this merit of a faithful partisan, that he loved 
those chiefs who treated him well, and stuck by Harley bravely 
in his fall, as he gallantly had supported him in his better 
fortune. 

Incomparably more brilliant, more splendid, eloquent, accom- 
plished than his rival, the great St. John could be as selfish as 
Oxford was, and could act the double part as skilfully as ambi- 
dextrous Churchill. He whose talk was always of liberty, no more 
shrank from using persecution and the pillory against his opponents 
than if he had been at Lisbon and Grand Inquisitor. This lofty 
patriot was on his knees at Hanover and St. Germains too ; notori- 
ously of no religion, he toasted Church and Queen as boldly as the 
stupid Sacheverel, whom he used and laughed at ; and to serve his 
turn, and to overthrow his enemy, he could intrigue, coax, bully, 
wheedle, fawn on the Court favourite, and creep up the backstair 
as silently as Oxford, who supplanted Marlborough, and wliom he 
himself supplanted. The crash of my Lord Oxford happened at 
this very time whereat my history is now arrived. He was come 
to the very last days of his power, and the agent whom he employed 
to overthrow the conqueror of Blenheim, was now engaged to upset 
the conqueror’s conqueror, and hand over the staff of government to 
Bolingbroke, who had been panting to hold it. 

In expectation of the stroke that was now preparing, the Irish 
I regiments in the French service were all brought round about Boulogne 
in Picardy, to pass over if need were with the Duke of Berwick ; 
the soldiers of France no longer, but subjects of James the Third of 
England and Ireland King. The fidelity of the great mass of the 
Scots (though a most active, resolute, and gallant Whig party, 
admirably and energetically ordered and disciplined, was known to 
be in Scotland too) was notoriously unshaken in their King. A 
very great body of Tory clergy, nobility, and gentry, were public 
partisans of the exiled Prince ; and the indiflerents might be counted 
bn to cry King George or King James, according as either should 
prevail. The Queen, especially in her latter days, inclined towards 


384 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

her own family. The Prince was lying actually in London, within 
a stone’s-cast of his sister’s palace ; the first Minister toppling to his 
fall, and so tottering that the weakest push of a woman’s finger 
would send him down ; and as for Bolingbroke, his successor, we 
know on whose side his power and his splendid eloquence would be 
on the day when the Queen should appear openly before her Council 
and say : — “ This, my Lords, is my brother ; here is my father’s 
heir, and mine after me.” 

During the whole of the previous year the Queen had had many 
and repeated fits of sickness, fever, and lethargy, and her death had 
been constantly looked for by all her attendants. The Elector of 
Hanover had wished to send his son, the Duke of Cambridge — to 
pay his court to his cousin the Queen, the Elector said ; — in truth, 
to be on the spot when death should close her career. Frightened 
perhaps to have such a memento mori under her royal eyes, her 
Majesty had angrily forbidden the young Prince’s coming into 
England. Either she desired to keep the chances for her brother 
open yet ; or the people about her did not wish to close with the 
Whig candidate till they could make terms with him. The quarrels 
of her Ministers before her face at the Council board, the pricks of 
conscience very likely, the importunities of her Ministers, and 
constant turmoil and agitation round about her, had weakened and 
irritated the Princess extremely ; her strength was giving way under 
these continual trials of her temper, and from day to day it was 
expected she must come to a speedy end of them. Just before 
Viscount Castlewood and his companion came from France, her 
Majesty was taken ill. The St. Anthony’s fire broke out on the 
Royal legs ; there was no hurry for the presentation of the young 
lord at Court, or that person who should appear under his name ; 
and my Lord Viscount’s wound breaking out opportunely, he was 
kept conveniently in his chamber until such time as his physician 
would allow him to bend his knee before the Queen. At the com- . 
mencement of July that influential lady, with whom it has been 
mentioned that our party had relations, came frequently to visit her 
young friend, the Maid of Honour, at Kensington, and my Lord 
Viscount (the real or supposititious), who was an invalid at Lady 
Castlewood’s house. 

On the 27th day of July, the lady in question, wdio held the 
most intimate post about the Queen, came in her chair from the . 
Palace hard by, bringing to the little party in Kensington Square i 
intelligence of the very highest importance. The final blow had 
been struck, and my Lord of Oxford and Mortimer was no longer 
Treasurer. The staff was as yet given to no successor, though my 
Lord Bolingbroke would undoubtedly be the man. And now the 


THE TIME WAS NOW COME 


385 


time was come, the Queen’s Abigail said : and now my Lord Castle- 
wood ought to be j)resented to the Sovereign, 

After that scene whicji Lord Castlewood witnessed and described 
to his cousin, who passed such a miserable night of mortification 
and jealousy as he thought over the transaction, no doubt the three 
])ersons who were set l)y nature as j^i'otectors over Beatrix came to 
the same conclusion, that she must be remo\ ed from the presence of 
a man whose desires towards her were expressed only too (dearly ; 
and who was no more scrupulous in seeking to gratify them tlian 
his fixther had been before him. I suppose Esmond’s mistress, her 
s(jn, and the Colonel himself, had been all secretly debating this 
matter in their minds, for when Frank broke out, in his blunt way, 
with : “I think Beatrix had best be anywhere but here,” — Lacly 
Castlewood said : “I thank you, Frank, I have thought so, too ; ” 
and Mr. Esmond, though he only remarked that it was not for 
him to speak, showed plainly, by the delight on his countenance, 
how very agreeable that proposal was to him. 

“ One sees that you think with us, Henry,” says the Viscountess, 
with ever so little of sarcasm in her tone : “ Beatrix is best out of 
this house whilst we have our guest in it, and as soon as this 
morning’s business is done, she ought to quit London.” 

“What morning’s business?” asked Colonel Esmond, not know- 
ing what had been arranged, though in fact the stroke next in 
importance to that of bringing the Prince, and of having him acknow- 
ledged by the Queen, was now being performed at the very moment 
we three were conversing together. 

The Court lady with whom our plan was concerted, and who 
was a chief agent in it, the Court physician, and the Bishop of 
Rochester, who were the other two most active participators in our 
plan, had held many councils in our house at Kensington and else- 
where, as to the means best to be adopted for presenting our young 
adventurer to his sister the Queen. The simple and easy plan pro- 
posed by Colonel Esmond had been agreed to by all parties, which 
was that on some rather private day, when there were not many 
persons about the Court, the Prince should appear there as my 
Lord Castlewood, should be greeted by his sister-in-waiting, and led 
by that other lady into the closet of the Queen. And according to 
her Majesty’s health or humour, and the circumstances that might 
arise during the interview, it was to be left to the discretion of 
those present at it, and to the Prince himself, whether he should 
declare that it was the Queen’s own brother, or the brother of 
Beatrix Esmond, who kissed her Royal hand. And this plan being 
determined on, we were all waiting in very much anxiety for the 
day and signal of execution. 

7 2 b 


386 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Two inorniiigs after that supper, it being the 27th da}^ of July, 
the Bishop of Rochester breakfasting with Lady Castlewood and 
her family, and the meal scarce over. Doctor A.’s coach drove up 
to our house at Kensington, and the Doctor a])peared amongst the 
party there, enlivening a rather gloomy company ; for the mother 
and daughter had had words in the morning in respect to the trans- 
actions of that supper, and other adventures perhaj)s, and on the 
day succeeding. Beatrix’s haughty spirit brooked remonstrances 
from no superior, much less from her mother, the gentlest of crea- 
tures, whom the girl commanded rather than obeyed. And feeling 
she was wrong, and that by a thousand coquetries (which she could 
no more help exercising on every man that came near her, than the 
sun can help shining on great and small) she had provoked the 
Prince’s dangerous admiration, and allured him to the expression of 
it, she was only the more wilful and imperious the more she felt 
her error. 

To this party, the Prince being served with chocolate in his bed- 
chamber, where he lay late sleeping away the fumes of his wine, the 
Doctor came, and by the urgent and startling nature of his news, 
dissipated instantly that private and minor unpleasantry under 
which the family of Castlewood was labouring. 

He asked for the guest ; the guest was above in his own apart- 
ment : he bade Monsieur Bajjtiste go up to his master instantly, 
and requested that my Lord Viscount Castlewood would straightway 
put his uniform on, and come away in the Doctor’s coach now at 
the door. 

He then informed Madam Beatrix what her part of the comedy 
was to be : — “ In half-an-hour,” says he, “ her Majesty and her 
favourite lady will take the air in the Cedar walk behind the new 
Banqueting-house. Her Majesty will be drawn in a garden chair. 
Madam Beatrix Esmond and her brother, rny Lord Viscount Castle- 
wood, will be walking in the private garden (here is Lady Masham’s 
key), and will come unawares upon the Royal party. The man 
that draws the chair will retire, and leave the Queen, the favourite, 
and the Maid of Honour and her brother together ; Mistress Beatrix 
Avill present her brother, and then ! — and then, my Lord Bishop 
will pray for the result of the interview, aiid his Scots clerk will 
say Amen ! Quick, put on your hood. Madam Beatrix ; why doth 
not his Majesty come down 1 Such another chance may not present 
itself for months again.” 

The Prince was late and lazy, and indeed had all but lost that 
chance through his indolence. The Queen was actually about to 
leave the garden just when the party reached it ; the Doctor, the 
Bishop, the Maid of Honour, and her brother, went off together 


DOCTOR ARBUTHNOT’kS PLAN 387 

in the physician’s coach, and had been gone half-an-hour when 
Colonel Esmond came to Kensington Square. 

The news of this errand, on which Beatrix was gone, of course 
for a moment put all thoughts of private jealousy out of Colonel 
Esmond’s head. In half-an-hour more the coach returned ; the 
Bishop descended from it first, and gave his arm to Beatrix, who 
now came out. His Lordship went back into the carriage again, 
and the Maid of Honour entered the house alone. We were all 
gazing at her from the upper window, trying to read from her 
countenance the result of the interview from wdiich she had just 
come 

She came into the drawing-room in a great tremor and very 
Ijale ; she asked for a glass of water as lier mother went to meet 
her, and after drinking that and putting off her hood, she began 
to speak: — “We may all hope for the best,” says she; “it has 
cost the Queen a fit. Her Majesty was in her chair in the Cedar 
walk, accompanied only by Lady — ■ — when w^e entered by the 
private wicket from the west side of the garden, and turned towards 
her, the Doctor following us. They waited in a side walk hidden 
by the shrubs, as we advanced towards the chair. My heart 
throbbed so I scarce could speak; but my Prince whispered, 
‘ Courage, Beatrix,’ and marched on with a steady step. His face 
was a little flushed, but he was not afraid of the danger. He 
who fought so bravely at Malplaquet fears nothing.” Esmond and 
Castlewood looked at each other at this compliment, neither liking 
the sound of it. 

“The Prince uncovered,” Beatrix continued, “and I saw the 
Queen turning round to Lady Masham, as if asking who these two 
were. Her Majesty looked very pale and ill, and then flushed up ; 
the favourite made us a signal to advance, and I went up, leading 
my Prince by the hand, quite close to the chair : ‘ Your Majesty 
will give my Lord Viscount your hand to kiss,’ says her lady, and 
the Queen put out her hand, which the Prince kissed, kneeling on 
his knee, he who should kneel to no mortal man or woman. 

“ ‘ You have been long from England, my Lord/ says the 
Queen : ‘ why were you not here to give a home to your mother 
and sister ? ’ 

“ ‘ I am come, madam, to stay now, if the Queen desires me,’ 
says the Prince, with another low bow. 

“ ‘ You have taken a foreign wife, my Lord, and a foreign 
religion ; was not that of England good enough for you 1 ” 

“ ‘ In returning to my father’s Church,’ says the Prince, ‘ I do 
not love my mother the less, nor am I the less faithful servant of 
your Majesty.’ 


388 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“Here,” says Beatrix, “the favourite gave me a little signal 
with her hand to fall back, which I did, though I died to hear 
what should pass ^ and whispered something to the Queen, Avhich 
made her Majesty start and utter one or two words in a hurried 
manner, looking towards the Prince, and catching hold with her 
hand of the arm of her chair. He advanced still nearer towards 
it ; he began to speak very rapidly ; I caught the words, ‘ Father, 
blessing, forgiveness,’ — and then presently the Prince fell on his 
knees; took from his breast a paper he had there, handed it to 
the Queen, who, as soon as she saw it, flung up both her arms with 
a scream, and took away that hand nearest the Prince, and whicli 
he endeavoured to kiss. He went on speaking with great aninni- 
tion of gesture, now clasping his hands together on his heart, now 
opening them as though to say : ‘ I am here, your brother, in your 
power.’ Lady Masham ran round on the other side of the chair, 
kneeling too, and speaking with great energy. She clasped the 
Queen’s hand on her side, and picked up the paper lier Majesty 
had let fall. The Prince rose and made a further speech as though 
he would go ; the favourite on the other hand urging her mistress, 
and then, running back to the Prince, brought him back once more 
close to the chair. Again he knelt down and took the Queen’s 
hand, which she did not withdraw, kissing it a hundred times ; 
my Lady all the time, Avitli sobs and supplications, speaking over 
the chair. This while the Queen sat with a stupefied look, 
crumpling the paper with one hand, as my Prince embraced the 
other ; then of a sudden she uttered several piercing shrieks, and 
burst into a great fit of hysteric tears and laughter. ‘ Enough, 
enough, sir, for this time,’ I heard Lady Masham say : and the 
chairman, who had withdrawn round the Banqueting-room, came 
back, alarmed by the cries. ‘ Quick,’ says Lady Masham, ‘ get 
some help,’ and I ran towards the Doctor, who, with the Bishop 
of Rochester, came up instantly. Lady Masham whispered the 
Prince he might hope for the very best and to be ready to-morrow ; 
and he hath gone away to the Bishop of Rochester’s house to meet 
several of his friends there. And so the great stroke is struck,” 
says Beatrix, going down on her knees, and clasping her hands. 
“ God save the King ! God save the King ! ” 

Beatrix’s tale told, and the young lady herself calmed somewhat 
of her agitation, we asked with regard to the Prince, who was absent 
with Bishop Atterbury, and were informed that ’twas likely he might 
remain abroad the whole day. Beatrix’s three kinsfolk looked at one 
another at this intelligence : ’twas clear the same thought was pass- 
ing through the minds of all. 

But wlio should begin to break the news 1 Monsieur Baptiste, 


BEATRIX AT BAY 


389 

that is Frank Gastlewood, turned very red, and looked towards 
Es.inond ; the Colonel bit his lips, and fairly beat a retreat into the 
window : it was Lady Gastlewood that opened upon Beatrix with 
the news which we knew wonld do anything but please her. 

“We are glad,” says she, taking her daughter’s hand, and speak- 
ing in a gentle voice, “ that the guest is away.” 

Beatrix drew back in an instant, looking round her at us three, 
and as if divining a danger. “ Why glad '? ” says she, her breast 
beginning to heave ; “are you so soon tired of him'?” 

“ We think one of us is devilishly too fond of him,” cries out 
Frank Gastlewood. 

“And which is it — you, my Lord, or is it mamma, who is 
jealous because he drinks my health? or is it the head of the 
family ” (here she turned with an imperious look towards Colonel 
Esmond), “ who has taken of late to preach the King sermons ? ” 

“We do not say you are too free with his Majesty.” 

“ I thank you, madam,” says Beatrix, with a toss of the head 
and a curtsey. 

But her mother continued, with very great calmness and dignity: 
“ At least we have not said so, though we might, were it possible 
for a mother to say such words to her own daughter, your father’s 
daughter. ’ 

mon joere,” breaks out Beatrix, “was no better than 
other persons’ fathers.” And again she looked towards the Colonel. 

We all felt a shock as she uttered those two or three French 
words ; her manner was exactly imitated from that of our foreign 
guest. 

“ You had not learned to speak French a month ago, Beatrix,” 
says her mother sadly, “ nor to speak ill of your father.” 

Beatrix, no doubt, saw that slip she had made in her flurry, for 
she blushed crimson : “ I have learnt to honour the King,” says she, 
drawing up, “and ’twere as well that others suspected neither his 
Majesty nor me.” 

“ If you respected your mother a little more,” Frank said, 
“ Trix, you would do yourself no hurt.” 

“ I am no child,” says she, turning round on him ; “ we have 
lived very well these five years without the benefit of your advice 
or example, and I intend to take neither now. Why does not the 
head of the house speak ? ” she went on ; “he rules everything here. 
When his chaplain has done singing the psalms, will his Lordship 
deliver the sermon % I am tired of the psalms.” The Prince had 
used almost the very same words in regard to Colonel Esmond that 
the imprudent girl repeated in her wrath. 

“You show yourself a very apt scholar, madam,” says the 


,390 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Colonel; and, turning to liis mistress, “Did your guest use these 
words in your Lad3'^ship’s hearing, or was it to Beatrix in private that 
he was pleased to impart his opinion regarding my tiresome sermon ?” 

“ Have you seen him alone ? ” cries my Lord, starting up with 
an oath : “by God, have you seen him alone?” 

“ Were he here, you wouldn’t dare so to insult me ; no, you 
would not dare!” cries Frank’s sister. “Keep your oaths, my 
Lord, for your wife ; we are not used liere to such language. Till 
you came, there used to be kindness between me and mamma, and 
I cared for her when you never did, when you were away for years 
with your horses and your mistress, and your Popish wdfe.” 

“ By ,” says my Lord, rapping out another oath, “ Clotilda 

is an angel ; how dare jmu say a word against Clotilda ? ” 

Colonel Esmond coidd not refrain from a smile, to see how easy 
Frank’s attack was drawn off by that feint. “ I fancy Clotilda 
is not the subject in hand,” saj^s Mr. Esmond, rather scornfully; 
“ her Ladyship is at Paris, a hundred leagues off, preparing baby- 
linen. It is about my Lord Castlewood’s sister, and not his wife, 
the question is.” 

“ He is not my Lord Castle wood,” says Beatrix, “ and he 
knows he is not ; he is Colonel Francis Esmond’s son, and no more, 
and he wears a false title ; and he lives on anotlier man’s land, and 
he knows it.” Here was another desperate sally of the poor 
beleaguered garrison, and an -alerte in another quarter. 

“Again, I beg your pardon,” says Esmond. “ If there are no proofs 
of my claim, I have no claim. If my father acknowledged no heir, 
yours was his lawful successor, and my Lord Castlewood hath as good 
a right to his rank and small estate’ as any man in England. But 
that again is not the question, as you know very well ; let us bring 
our talk back to it, as you will have me meddle in it. And I will 
give you frankly my opinion, that a house wdiere a Prince lies all 
day, wdio respects no woman, is no house for a young unmarried 
lady ; that you were better in the country than here ; that he is 
here on a great end, from which no folly should divert him ; and that 
having nobly done your part of this morning, Beatrix, you should retire 
off the scene a while, and leave it to the other actors of the play.” 

As the Colonel spoke with a perfect calmness and politeness, such 
as ’tis to be hoped he liath always shown to women,* his mistress 

* My dear father saith quite truly, that his manner towards our sex was 
uniformly courteous. From my infancy upwards, he treated me with an extreme 
gentleness, as though I was a little lady. I can scarce remember (though I tried 
him often) ever hearing a rough word from him, nor was he less grave and kind 
in his manner to the humblest negresses on his estate. He was familiar with no 
one except my mother, and it was delightful to witness up to the very last days 


SHE SURRENDERS 391 

stood by liiin on one side of the table, and Fnink Castlewood on 
the other, hemming in poor Beatrix, that was behind it, and, as 
it were, surrounding her with our approaches. 

Having twice sallied out and been beaten back, she now, as 
I expected, tried the ultima ratio of women, and had recourse to 
tears. Her beautiful eyes filled witli them ; I never could bear 
in her, nor in any woman, that expression of pain : — “ I am alone,” 
sobbed she; “you are three against me — my brother, my mother, 
and you. What have I done, that you should speak and look so 
unkindly at mel Is it my fault that the Prince should, as you 
say, admire me ? Did I bring him here 1 Did I do aught but 
what you bade me, in making him welcome ? Did you not tell rne 
that our duty was to die for him 1 Did you not teach me, mother, 
night and morning to pray for the King, before even ourselves ? 
What would you have of me, cousin, for you are the chief of the 
conspiracy against me ; I know you are, sir, and that my mother 
and brother are acting but as you bid them ; whither would you 
have me go ” 

“ I would but remove from the Prince,” says Esmond gravely, 
“ a dangerous temptation. Heaven forbid I should say you would 
yield : I would only have him free of it. Your honour needs no 
guardian, please God, but liis imprudence doth. He is so far 
removed from all women by his rank, that his pursuit of them 
cannot but be unlawful. We would remove the dearest and fairest 
of our family from the chance of that insult, and that is why we 
would have you go, dear Beatrix.” 

“ Harry speaks like a book,” says Frank, with one of his oaths, 

‘ and, by , every word he saith is true. You can’t help being 

handsome, Trix ; no more can the Prince help following you. My 
counsel is that you go out of harm’s way ; for, by the Lord, were 
the Prince to ])lay any tricks Avith you. King as he is, or is to be, 
Harry Esmond and I would have justice of him.” 

“ Are not two such champions enough to guard me 1 ” says 
Beatrix, something sorrowfully ; “ sure with you two watching, no 
evil could happen to me.” 

“ In faith, I think not, Beatrix,” says Colonel Esmond ; “ nor 
if the Prince knew us would he try.” 

the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him ; and my 
mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to please him, and 
quite a terror lest in any way they should offend him. He was the humblest man, 
with all this ; the least exacting, the most easily contented ; and Mr. Benson, our 
minister at Castlewood, who attended him at the last, ever said : “I know not 
what Colonel Esmond’s doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout 
Christian.” — R. E. W. 


S 92 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ Bat does he know you 'I ” interposed Lady Castle wood, very 
quiet ; “ he comes of a country where the pursuit of kings is 
thought no dishonour to a woman. Let us go, dearest Beatrix ! 
Shall we go to Walcote or to Castlewood ? We are best away from 
the city ; and wlien the Prince is acknowledged, and our champions 
have restored him, and he hath his own house at St. James’s or 
Windsor, we can come back to ours here. Do you not tliink so, 
Harry and Frank ? ” 

Frank and Harry thought with her, you may be sure. 

“We will go, then,” says Beatrix, turning a little pale ; “Lady 
Masliam is to give me warning to-night how her Majesty is, and 
to-morrow ” 

“I think we had best go to-day, my dear,” says my Lady 
Castlewood ; “we might have the coach and sleep at Hounslow, 
and reach home to-morrow. ’Tis twelve o’clock ; bid the coach, 
cousin, be ready at one.” 

“ For shame ! ” burst out Beatrix, in a passion of tears and 
mortification. “You disgrace me by your cruel precautions ; my 
own mother is the first to suspect me, and would take me away as 
my gaoler. I will not go with you, mother ; I will go as no one’s 
prisoner. If I wanted to deceive, do you think I could find no 
means of evading you 1 My family suspects me. As those mis- 
trust me that ought to love me most, let me leave them ; I will 
go, but I will go alone : to Castlewood, be it. I have been un- 
happy there and lonely enough ; let me go back, but spare me at 
least the humiliation of setting a watch over my misery, which is 
a trial I can’t bear. Let me go when you will, but alone, or not 
at all. You three can stay and triumph over my unhappiness, and 
I will bear it as I have borne it before. Let my gaoler-in-chief go 
order the coach that is to take me away. I thank you, Henry 
Esmond, for your share in the' conspiracy. All my life long I’ll 
thank you, and remember you, and you, brother, and you, mother, 
how shall I show my gratitude to you for your careful defence of 
my honour 1 ” 

She swept out of the room with the air of an empress, flinging 
glances of defiance at us all, and leaving us conquerors of the field, 
but scared, and almost ashamed of our victory. It did indeed 
seem hard and cruel that we three should have conspired the 
banishment and humiliation of that fair creature. We looked at 
each other in silence ; ’twas not the first stroke by many of our 
actions in that unlucky time, which, being done, we wished undone. 
We agreed it was best she should go alone, speaking stealthily to 
one another, and under our breaths, like persons engaged in an act 
they felt ashamed in doing. 


HAMILTON’S PORTRAIT 


S9S 

In ii half-hour, it might be, after our talk she came back, 
her countenance wearing the same defiant air which it had borne 
when she left us. She held a shagreen case in her hand ; Esmond 
knew it as containing his diamonds which he had given to 
her for her marriage with Duke Hamilton, and which she had 
worn so splendidly on the inauspicious night of the Prince’s 
arrival. “ I have brought back,” says she, “ to the Marquis of 
Esmond the present he deigned to make me in days when he 
trusted me better than now. I will never accept a benefit or 
a kindness from Henry Esmond more, and I give back these 
family diamonds, which belonged to one King’s mistress, to the 
gentleman that suspected I would be another. Have you been 
upon your message of coach-caller, my Lord Marquis? Will you 
send your valet to see that I do not run away?” We were 
right, yet, by her manner, she had put us all in the wrong; we 
were conquerors, yet the honours of the day seemed to be with the 
poor oppressed girl. 

That luckless box containing the stones had first been orna- 
mented with a Baron’s coronet, when Beatrix was engaged to the 
young gentleman from whom she parted, and afterwards the gilt 
crown of a Duchess figured on the cover, which also poor Beatrix 
was destined never to wear. Lady Castlewood opened the case 
mechanically and scarce thinking what she did ; and, behold, be- 
sides the diamonds, Esmond’s present, there lay in the box the 
enamelled miniature of the late Duke, which Beatrix had laid aside 
with her mourning when the King came into the house ; and which 
the poor heedless thing very likely had forgotten. 

“ Do you leave this, too, Beatrix ? ” says her mother, taking the 
miniature out, and with a cruelty she did not very often show ; 
but there are some moments when the tenderest women are cruel, 
and some triumphs which angels can’t forego.* 

Having delivered this stab. Lady Castlewood was frightened at 
the effect of her blow. It went to poor Beatrix’s heart : she 
ffushed up and passed a handkerchief across her eyes, and kissed 
the miniature, and put it into her bosom “ I had forgot it,” says 
she ; “my injury made me forget my grief : my mother has recalled 
both to me. Farewell, mother ; I think I never can forgive you ; 
something hath broke between us that no tears nor years can 
repair. I always said I was alone : you never loved me, never — 
and were jealous of me from the time I sat on my father’s knee. 

* This remark shows how unjustly and contemptuously even the best of men 
will sometimes judge of our sex. Lady Castlewood had no intention of triumph- 
ing over her daughter ; but from a sense of duty alone pointed out her deplor- 
able wrong. — R. E. 


394 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

Let me go away, the sooner the better : I can bear to be with 
you no more.” 

“Go, child,” says her motlier, still very stern; “go and bend 
your proud knees and ask forgiveness ; go, pray in solitude for 
humility and repentance. ’Tis not your reproaches that make me 
unhappy, ’tis your hard heart, my poor Beatrix : may God soften 
it, and teach you one day to feel for your mother.” 

If my mistress was cruel, at least she never could be got to own 
as much. Her haughtiness cpiite overtopped Beatrix’s ; and, if the 
girl had a proud spirit, I very much fear it came to her by 
inheritance. 


) 


CHAPTER XI 

OUR GUEST QUITS US AS NOT BEING HOSPITABLE ENOUGH 



EATRIX’S departure took place within an hour, her maid 
going with her in the post-chaise, and a man armed on the 


coach-box to prevent any danger of the road. Esmond and 
Frank thought of escorting the carriage, but she indignantly refused 
tlieir company, and another man was sent to follow the coach, and 
not to leave it till it had passed over Hounslow Heath on the next 
day. And these two forming the whole of Lady Castlewood’s male 
domestics, Mr. Esmond’s faithful John Lockwood came to wait 
on his mistress during their absence, though he would have pre- 
ferred to escort Mrs. Lucy, his sweetheart, on her journey into the 


country. 


We had a gloomy and silent meal; it seemed as if a darkness 
was over the house, since the bright face of Beatrix had been with- 
drawn from it. In the afternoon came a message from the favourite 
to relieve us somewhat from this despondency. “ The Queen hath 
been much shaken,” the note said ; “ she is better now, and all 
things will go well. Let 7ny Lord Castlewood be ready against 
we send for him.” 

At night there came a second billet : “ Tliere hath been a great 
battle in Council ; Lord Treasurer hath broke his staff, and hath 

fallen never to rise again ; no successor is appointed. Lord B 

receives a great Whig company to-night at Golden Square. If lie 
is trimming, others are true ; the Queen hath no more fits, but is 
a-bed now, and more quiet. Be ready against morning, when I 
still hope all will be well.” 

The Prince came home shortly after the messenger who boie 
this billet had left the house. His Royal Highness was so much 
the better for the Bishop’s liquor, that to talk affairs to him now 
was of little service. He was helped to the Royal bed ; he called 
Castlewood familiarly by his own name ; he quite forgot the part 
upon the acting of whicli his crown, his safety, depended. ’Twas 
lucky that my Lady Castlewood’s servants were out of the way, 
and only those heard him who would not betray him. He inquired 
after the adorable Beatrix, with a Royal hiccup in his voice ; he 


396 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

was easily got to bed, and in a minute or two plunged in that deep 
slumber and forgetfulness with which Bacchus rewards the votaries 
of that god. We wished Beatrix had been there to see him in his 
cups. We regretted, perhaps, that she was gone. 

One of the party at Kensington Square was fool enough to ride 
to Hounslow that night, coram latronihus, and to the inn which 
the family used ordinarily in their journeys out of London. Esmond 
desired my landlord not to acquaint Madam Beatrix with his coming, 
and had the grim satisfaction of passing by the door of the chamber 
where she lay with her maid, and of watching her chariot set forth 
in the early morning. He saw her smile and slip money into the 
man’s hand who was ordered to ride behind the coach as far as 
Bagshot. The road being open, and the other servant armed, it 
appeared she dispensed with the escort of a second domestic ; and 
this fellow, bidding his young mistress adieu with many bows, went 
and took a pot of ale in the kitchen, and returned in company with 
his brother servant, John Coachman, and his horses, back to 
London. 

They were not a mile out of Hounslow when the two worthies 
stopped for more drink, and here they were scared by seeing 
Colonel Esmond gallop by them. The man said in reply to Colonel 
Esmond’s stern question, that his young mistress had sent her duty ; 
only that, no other message : she had had a very good night, and 
would reach Castlewood by nightfall. The Colonel had no time 
for further colloquy, and galloped on swiftly to London, having 
business of great importance there, as my reader very well knoweth. 
The thought of Beatrix riding away from the danger soothed his 
mind not a little. His horse was at Kensington Square (honest 
Dapple knew the way thither well enough) before the tipsy guest 
of last night was awake and sober. 

The account of the previous "evening was known all over the 
town early next day. A violent altercation had taken place before 
the Queen in the Council Chamber ; and all the coffee-houses had 
their version of the quarrel. The news brought my Lord Bishop 
early to Kensington Square, where he awaited the waking of his 
Royal master above stairs, and spoke confidently of having him pro- 
claimed as Prince of Wales and heir to the throne before that day 
was over. The Bishop had entertained on the previous afternoon 
certain of the most influential gentlemen of the true British party. 
His Royal Highness had charmed all, both Scots and English, 
Papists and Churchmen: “Even Quakers,” says he, “were at our 
meeting ; and, if the stranger took a little too much British punch 
and ale, he will soon grow more accustomed to those liquors ; and 
my Lord Castlewood,” says the Bishop with a laugh, “must bear 


THE PRINCE IN COUNCIL 


S97 

the cruel charge of having been for once in his life a little tipsy. 
He toasted your lovely sister a dozen times, at which we all 
laughed,” says the Bishop, “admiring so much fraternal aftection. 
— Where is that charming nymph, and why doth she not adorn 
your Ladyship’s tea-table with her bright eyes 'I ” 

Her Ladyship said drily, that Beatrix was not at home that 
morning; my Lord Bisliop was too busy with great affairs to 
trouble himself much about the presence or absence of any lady, 
liowever beautiful. 

We were yet at table when Dr. A came from the Palace 

with a look of great alarm ; the shocks the Queen had had the day 
before had acted on her severely ; he had been sent for, and had 
ordered her to be blooded. The surgeon of Long Acre had come to 
cup the Queen, and her Majesty was now more easy and breathed 
more freely. What made us start at the name of Mr. Aymd ? ” 
“ II faut etre aimable pour etre aim^,” says the merry Doctor ; 
Esmond pulled his sleeve, and bade him hush. It was to Aym^’s 
house, after his fatal duel, tliat my dear Lord Castlewood, Frank’s 
father, had been carried to die. 

No second visit could be paid to the Queen on that day at any 
rate ; and when our guest above gave his signal that he was awake, 
the Doctor, the Bishop, and Colonel Esmond waited upon the 
Prince’s levde, and brought him their news, cheerful or dubious. 
The Doctor had to go away presently, but promised to keep the 
Prince constantly acquainted with what was taking place at the 
Palace hard by. His counsel was, and the Bishop’s, that as soon 
as ever the Queen’s malady took a favourable turn, the Prince 
should be introduced to her bedside ; the Council summoned ; the 
guard at Kensington and St. James’s, of which two regiments were 
to be entirely relied on, and one known not to be hostile, would 
declare for the Prince, as the Queen would before the Lords of her 
Council, designating him as the heir to her throne. 

With locked doors, and Colonel Esmond acting as secretary, the 
Prince and his Lordship of Rochester passed many hours of this 
day, composing Proclamations and Addresses to the Country, to tlie 
Scots, to the Clergy, to the People of London and England; an- 
nouncing the arrival of the exile descendant of three Sovereigns, 
and his acknowledgment by his sister as heir to the throne. Every 
safeguard for their liberties, the Church and people could ask, was 
promised to them. The Bishop could answer for the adhesion of 
very many prelates, who besought of their flocks and brother eccle- 
siastics to recognise the sacred right of the future Sovereign and to 
purge the country of the sin of rebellion. 

• During the composition of these papers more messengers than 


398 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

one came from the Palace regarding the state of the angust jiatient 
there lying. At mid-day she was somewhat better ; at evening the 
torpor again seized her and she wandered in her mind. At night 
Dr. A was with ns again, with a report rather more favour- 

able; no instant danger at any rate was api)rehended. In tlie 
course of the last two years lier Majesty had had many attacks 
similar, but more severe. 

By this time we had finished a half-dozen of Proclamations (the 
wording of them so as to offend no parties, and not to give umbrage 
to Whigs or Dissenters, required very great caution), and the young 
Prince, who had indeed shown, during a long day’s labour, both 
alacrity at seizing the information given him, and ingenuity and 
skill in turning the phrases which were to go out signed by his 
name, here exhibited a good-humour and thoughtfulness that ought 
to be set down to liis credit. 

“Were these papers to be mislaid,” says he, “or our scheme to 
come to mishap, my Lord Esmond’s writing would bring him to 
a place where I heartily hope never to see him ; and so, by your 
leave, I will copy the papers myself, though I am not very strong 
in spelling ; and if they are found they will implicate none but the 
person they most concern ; ” and so, having carefully copied the 
Proclamations out, the Prince burned those in Colonel Esmond’s 
handwriting: “And now, and now, gentlemen,” says lie, “let us 
go to supper, and drink a glass with the ladies. My Lord Esmond, 
you will sup with us to-night ; you have given us of late too little 
of your company.” 

The Prince’s meals were commonly served in the chamber which 
had been Beatrix’s bedroom, adjoining that in which he slept. And 
the dutiful practice of his entertainers was to wait until their Royal 
guest bade them take their places at table before they sat down to 
partake of the meal. On this night, as you may suppose, only Frank 
Castlewood and his mother were in waiting when the supper was 
announced to receive the Prince ; who had passed the Avhole of the 
day in his own apartment, with the Bishop as his Minister of State, 
and Colonel Esmond officiating as Secretary of his Council. 

The Prince’s countenance wore an expression by no means plea- 
sant, when looking towards the little company assembled, and wait- 
ing for him, he did not see Beatrix’s bright face there as usual to 
greet him. He asked Lady Esmond for his fair introducer of 
yesterday : her Ladyship only cast her eyes down, and said quietly, 
Beatrix could not be of the sufiper that night ; nor did she show 
the least sign of confusion, whereas Castlewood turned red, and 
Esmond was no less embarrassed. I think women have an instinct of 
dissimulation ; they know by nature hoAv to disguise their emotions 


LE PKINOE SE FASCHE 399 

far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do. Is not 
the better part of the life of many of them spent in hiding their 
feelings, in cajoling their tyrants, in masking over with fond smiles 
and artful gaiety their doubt, or their grief, or their terror 'I 

Our guest swallowed his supper very sulkily ; it was not till the 
second bottle his Highness began to rally. When Lady Castlewood 
asked leave to depart, he sent a message to Beatrix, hoping she 
would be present at the next day’s dinner, and applied himself to 
drink, and to talk afterwards, for which there was subject in plenty. 

The next day, we heard from our informer at Kensington that 
the Queen was somewhat better, and had been up for an hour, 
though she was not well enough yet to receive any visitor. 

At dinner a single cover was laid for his Eoyal Highness ; and 
the two gentlemen alone waited on him. We had had a consulta- 
tion in the morning with Lady Castlewood, in which it had been 
determined that, should his Highness ask further questions about 
Beatrix, lie should be answered by the gentlemen of the house. 

He was evidently disturbed and uneasy, looking towards the 
door constantly, as if expecting some one. There came, however, 
nobody, except honest John Lockwood, when he knocked, with a 
dish, which those within took from him ; so the meals were always 
arranged, and I believe the council in the kitchen were of opinion 
that my young lord had brought over a priest, who had converted 
us all into Papists, and that Papists were like J ews, eating together, 
and not choosing to take their meals in the sight of Christians. 

The Prince tried to cover his displeasure : he was but a clumsy 
dissembler at that time, and when out of humour could with diffi- 
culty keep a serene countenance ; and having made some foolish 
attemxits at trivial talk, he came to his point presently, and in as 
easy a manner as he could, saying to Lord Castlewood, he hoped, he 
requested, his Lordship’s mother and sister would be of the supper 
that night. As the time hung heavy on him, and he must not go 
abroad, would not Miss Beatrix hold him company at a game of 
cards ] 

At this, looking up at Esmond, and taking the signal from him. 
Lord Castlewood informed his Boyal Highness * that his sister 
Beatrix was not at Kensington ; and that her family had thought 
it best she should quit the town. 

“Not at Kensington!” says he. “Is she ill? she was well 
yesterday ; wherefore should she quit the town ? Is it at your 
orders, my Lord, or Colonel Esmond’s, who seems the master of 
this house?” 

* In London we addressed the Prince as Royal Highness invariably ; though 
the women persisted in giving him the title of King. 


400 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“Not of this, sir,” says Frank very nobly, “only of our house 
in tlie country, which he hath given to us. This is my mother’s 
house, and Walcote is my father’s, and the Marquis of Esmond 
knows he hath but to give his word, and I return his to him.” 

“ The Marquis of Esmond ! — the Marquis of Esmond,” says the 
Prince, tossing off a glass, “meddles too much with my affairs, and 
presumes on the service he hath done me. If you want to carry 
your suit with Beatrix, my Lord, by locking her up in gaol, let me 
tell you that is not the way to win a woman.” 

“ I was not aware, sir, that I had spoken of my suit to Madam 
Beatrix to your Royal Highness.” 

“ Bah, bah, monsieur ! we need not be a conjurer to see that. 
It makes itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my Lord, 
and the Maid of Honour cannot look at another face without yours 
beginning to scowl. That which you do is unworthy, monsieur ; is 
inhospitable — is, is lache, yes, lache ” (he spoke rapidly in French, 
his rage carrying him away with each phrase) : “I come to your 
house ; I risk my life ; I pass it in ennui ; I repose myself on your 
fidelity ; I have no company but your Lordship’s sermons or the 
conversations of that adorable young lady, and you take her from 
me, and you, you rest ! Merci, monsieur ! I shall thank you 
when I have the means ; I shall know to recompense a devotion a 
little importunate, my Lord — a little importunate. For a month 
past your airs of protector have annoyed me beyond measure. You 
deign to offer me the crown, and bid me take it on my knees like 
King John — eh ! I know my history, monsieur, and mock myself 
of frowning barons. I admire your mistress, and you send her to a 
Bastile of the Province ; I enter your house, and you mistrust me. 
I will leave it, monsieur ; from to-night I will leave it. I have 
other friends whose loyalty will not be so ready to question mine. 
If I have garters to give away, ’tis to noblemen who are not so 
ready to think evil. Bring me a coach and let me quit this place, 
or let the fair Beatrix return to it. I will not have your hospitality 
at the expense of the freedom of that fair creature.” 

This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulation such as the 
French use, and in the language of that nation. The Prince striding 
up and down the room ; his face flushed, and his hands trembling 
with anger. He was very thin and frail from repeated illness and 
a life of pleasure. Either Castlewood or Esmond could have broke 
him across their knee, and in half-a-minute’s struggle put an end to 
him ; and here he was insulting us both, and scarce deigning to 
liide from the two, whose honour it most concerned, the passion he 
felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood replied 
to the Prince’s tirade very nobly and simply. 


401 


A DISAGREEABLE NIGHT 

“ Sir,” says he, “ your Royal Highness is pleased to forget that 
others risk their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, 
l)lease God, would dare to lay hands on your sacred person, tliough 
none would ever think of respecting ours. Our family’s lives are 
at your service, and everything we have, except our lionour.” 

“ Honour ! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honour ? ” 
says the Prince with a peevish air. 

“We implore your Royal Highness never to think of hurting 
it,” says Lord Castlewood with a low bow. The night being warm, 
the windows were open both towards the Gardens and the Square. 
Colonel Esmond heard through the closed door the voice of the 
watchman calling the hour, in the Square on the other side. He 
opened the door communicating with the Prince’s room ; Martin, 
the servant that had rode with Beatrix to Hounslow, was just going 
out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and when the fellow was 
gone, and the watchman again sang his cry of “ Past ten o’clock, 
and a starlight night,” Esmond spoke to the Prince in a low voice, 
and said, “ Your Royal Highness hears that man ? ” 

“ Apr^s, monsieur 1 ” says the Prince. 

“ I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him 
fifty yards, and he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up 
to him the body of the person calling himself James the Third, for 
whose capture Parliament hath oftered a reward of <£500, as your 
Royal Highness saw on our ride from Rochester. I have but to say 
the word, and, by the Heaven that made me, I would say it if I 
thought the Prince, for his honour’s sake, would not desist from 
insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows his duty 
too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril his crown for 
a deed that were shameful if it were done.” 

“ Has your Lordship anything to say,” says the Prince, turning 
to Frank Castlewood, and quite pale with anger ; “ any threat or 
any insult, with which you would like to end this agreeable night’s 
entertainment 1 ” 

“ I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing 
gravely. “ At what time shall it please the Prince that we should 
wait upon him in the morning'?” 

“You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid 
him bring his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in 
his own house, or in a place of safety. The King will reward you 
handsomely, never fear, for all you have done in his behalf. I wish 
you a good night, and shall go to bed, unless it pleases the Marquis 
of Esmond to call his colleague, the watchman, and that I should 
pass the night with tlie Kensington guard. Fare you well ; be sure 
I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed 


402 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


to-niglit without need of a cliamherlaiii.” And the Prince dismissed 
us Avitli a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the 
suj)})ing-room, iind the other tlirough which we passed, after us. 
It led into the small chamber which Frank Castlewood or Monsieur 
Baj^tiste occupied, and by which Martin entered when Colonel 
Esmond but now saw him in the chamber. 

At an early hour next morning the Bishop arrived, and was 
closeted for some time with his master in his own apartment, wliere 
the Prince laid open to his counsellor the wrongs which, according 
to his version, he had received from the gentlemen of the Esmond 
family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an 
air of great satisfaction ; he was a man full of resources, and of a 
most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good 
qualities ; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could 
not help exulting at tlie downfall of any favourite ; and he was 
jdeased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond Ministry was at 
an end. 

“ I have soothed your guest,” says he, coming out to the two 
gentlemen and the widow, who had been made acquainted with 
somewhat of the dispute of the night before. (By the version we 
gave her, the Prince was only made to exhibit auger because we 
doubted of his intentions in respect to Beatrix; and to leave us, 
because we questioned his honour.) “But I think, all things 
considered, ’tis as well he should leave this house; and then, my 
Lady Castlewood,” says the Bishop, “ my pretty Beatrix may come 
back to it.” 

“ She is quite as well at home at Castlewood,” Esmond’s mistress 
said, “ till everything is over.” 

“ You shall have your title, Esmond, that I promise you,” says 
the good Bishop, assuming the airs of a Prime Minister. “The 
Prince hath expressed himself most nobly in regard of the little 
difference of last niglit, and I promise you he hath listened to my 
sermon, as well as to that of other folks,” says the Doctor archly ; 
“lie hath every great and generous quality, with perhaps a weakness 
for the sex which belongs to his family, and hath been known in 
scores of popular sovereigns from King David downwards.” 

“ My Lord, my Lord ! ” breaks out Lady Esmond, “ the levity 
with which you speak of such conduct towards our sex shocks me, 
and what you call weakness I call deplorable sin.” 

“ Sin it is, my dear creature,” says the Bishop, with a shrug, 
taking snuff ; “ but consider what a sinner King Solomon was, and 
in spite of a thousand of wives too.” 

“ Enough of this, my Lord,” says Lady Castlewood, with a fine 
blush, and walked out of the room very stately. 


THE PRINCE LEAVES US 


403 


The Prince entered it presently with a smile on his face, and if 
he felt any offence against ns on the i)revious night, at present 
exhibited none. He offered a hand to each gentleman with great 
courtesy. “ If all yonr bishops i)reacli so well as Doctor Atterl)iiry,” 
says he, “ I don’t know, gentlemen, what may happen to me. I 
spoke very hastily, my lords, last night, and ask pardon of both of 
you. But I must not stay any longer,” says he, “ giving umbrage 
to good friends, or keeping pretty girls away from their homes. 
My Lord Bishop hath found a safe place for me, hard by at a 
curate’s house, whom the Bishop can trust, and whose wife is so 
ugly as to be beyond all danger ; we will decamp into those new 
quarters, and I leave you, thanking you for a hundred kindnesses 
here. Where is my hostess, that I may bid her farewell'? to 
welcome her in a house of my own, soon, I trust, where my friends 
shall have no cause to quarrel with me.” 

Lady Castlewood arrived presently, blushing with great grace, 
and tears filling her eyes as the Prince graciously saluted her. She 
looked so charming and young, that the Doctor, in his bantering 
way, could not help speaking of her beauty to the Prince ; whose 
compliment made her blush, and look more charming still. 


CHAPTER XII 


A GREAT SCHEME, AND WHO BALKED IT 
1 characters written with a secret ink come out with the appli- 



cation of fire, and disappear again and leave the paper white, 


^ so soon as it is cool ; a hundred names of men, high in 
repute and favouring the Prince’s cause, that were writ in our 
private lists, would have been visible enough on the great roll of the 
conspiracy, had it ever been laid open under the sun. What ciwvds 
would have pressed forward, and subscribed their names and pro- 
tested their loyalty, when the danger was over ! What a number 
of Whigs, now high in place and creatures of the all-powerful 
Minister, scorned Mr. Walpole then ! If ever a match was gained 
by the manliness and decision of a few at a moment of danger ; if 
ever one was lost by the treachery and imbecility of those that had 
the cards in their hands, and might have played them, it was in that 
momentous game which was enacted in the next three days, and of 
which the noblest crown in the world was the stake. 

From the conduct of my Lord Bolingbroke, those who were 
interested in the scheme we had in hand saw pretty well that he 
was not to be trusted. Should the Prince prevail, it was his 
Lordship’s gracious intention to declare for him : should the Hano- 
verian party bring in their Sovereign, who more ready to go on his 
knee, and cry “ God save King George ” ? And he betrayed the 
one Prince and the other ; but exactly at the wrong time. When 
he should have struck for King James, he faltered and coquetted 
with the Whigs ; and having committed himself by the most mon- 
strous professions of devotion, which the Elector rightly scorned, 
he proved the justice of their contempt for him by flying and taking 
renegade service with St. Germains, just when he should have kept 
aloof: and that Court despised him, as the manly and resolute 
men who established the Elector in England had before done. He 
signed his own name to every accusation of insincerity his enemies 
made against him ; and the King and the Pretender alike could 
show proofs of St. John’s treachery under his own hand and seal. 

Our friends kept a pretty close watch upon his motions, as on 
those of the brave and hearty Whig party, that made little con- 


DIFFERENCE AMONGST COUNCILLORS 405 

cealment of theirs. They would have in the Elector, and used 
every means in their power to effect their end. My Lord Marl- 
borough was now with them. His expulsion from power by the 
Tories had thrown that great captain at once on the Whig side. 
We heard he was coming from Antwerp ; and, in fact, on the day 
ot the Queen’s death, he once more landed on English shore. A 
great part of the army was always with their illustrious leader; 
even the Tories in it were indignant at the injustice of the per- 
secution which the Whig officers were made to undergo. The 
chiefs of these were in London, and at the head of them one of 
the most intrepid men in the world, the Scots Duke of Argyle, 
whose conduct on the second day after that to which I have now 
brought down my history, ended, as such honesty and bravery 
deserved to end, by establishing the present Royal race on the 
English throne. 

Meanwhile there was no slight difference of opinion amongst the 
councillors surrounding the Prince, as to the plan his Highness 
should pursue. His female Minister at Court, fancying she saw 
some amelioration in the Queen, was for waiting a few days, or 
hours it might be, until he could be brought to her bedside, and 
acknowledged as her heir. Mr. Esmond was for having him march 
thither, escorted by a couple of troops of Horse Guards, and openly 
I)resenting himself to the Council. During the whole of the night 
of the 29th-30th July, the Colonel was engaged with gentlemen of 
the military profession, whom ’tis needless here to name ; suffice it 
to say that several of them had exceeding high rank in the army, 
and one of them in especial was a General, who, when he heard the 
Duke of Marlborough was coming on the other side, waved his 
crutch over his head with a liuzzah, at the idea that he should 
march out and engage him. Of the three Secretaries of State, we 
knew that one was devoted to us. The Governor of the Tower was 
ours ; the two companies on duty at Kensington barrack were safe ; 
and we had intelligence, very speedy and accurate, of all that took 
place at the Palace within. 

At noon, on the 30th of July, a message came to the Prince’s 
friends that the Committee of Council was sitting at Kensington 
Palace, their Graces of Ormonde and Shrewsbury, and Archbishop 
of Canterbury and the three Secretaries of State, being there as- 
sembled. In an hour afterwards, hurried news was brought that 
the two great Whig Dukes, Argyle and Somerset, had broke into 
the Council Chamber without a summons, and taken their seat at 
table. After holding a debate there, the whole party proceeded to 
the chamber of the Queen, who was lying in great weakness, but 
still sensible, and the Lords recommended his Grace of Shrewsbury 


406 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

as the fittest person to take the vacant place of Lord Treasurer ; 
her Majesty gave him the staff; as all know. “And now,” writ 
my messenger from Court, now or never is the time^ 

Now or never was the time indeed. In spite of the Whig 
Dukes, our side had still the majority in the Council, and Esmond, 
to whom the message had been brought (the personage at Court 
not being aware that the Prince liad quitted his lodging in Ken- 
sington Square), and Esmond’s gallant young aide-de-camp, Frank 
Castlewood, putting on sword and uniform, took a brief leave of 
their dear lady, who embraced and blessed them both, and went to 
her chamber to pray for the issue of the great event which was 
then pending. 

Castlewood sped to the barrack to give warning to the captain 
of the Guard there; and then went to the “King’s Arms” tavern 
at Kensington, where our friends were assembled, having come by 
parties of twos and threes, riding or in coaches, and were got 
together in the upper chamber, fifty-tliree of them ; their servants, 
who had been instructed to bring arms likewise, being below in the 
garden of the tavern, where they were served with drink. Out 
of this garden is a little door that leads into the road of the Palace, 
and through this it was arranged that masters and servants were to 
march ; when that signal was given, and that Personage appeared, 
for whom all were waiting. There was in our company the famous 
officer next in command to the Captain-General of the Forces, his 
Grace the Duke of Ormonde, who was within at the Council. There 
were with him two more lieutenant-generals, nine major-generals and 
brigadiers, seven colonels, eleven Peers of Parliament, and twenty- 
one members of the House of Commons. The Guard was with us 
within and without the Palace ; the Queen was with us ; the 
Council (save the two Whig Dukes, that must have succumbed) ; 
the day was our own, and with a beating heart Esmond walked 
rapidly to the Mall of Kensington, where he had parted with the 
Prince on the night before. For three nights the. Colonel had not been 
to bed ; the last had been passed summoning the Prince’s friends 
together, of whom the great majority had no sort of inkling of the 
transaction pending until they were told that he was actually on 
the spot, and were summoned to strike the blow. The night before 
and after the altercation with the Prince, my gentleman, having 
suspicions of his Royal Highness, and fearing lest he should be 
minded to give us the slip, and fly off' after his fugitive beauty, had 
spent, if the truth must be told, at the “ Greyhound ” tavern, over 
against my Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square, with an 
eye on the door, lest the Prince should escape from it. The night 
before that he had passed in his boots at the “ Crown ” at Houn- 


WE CANNOT FIND THE PRINCE 407 

slow, where he iiiiist watch forsooth all night, in order to get one 
inonient’s glimpse of Beatrix in the morning. And fate had decreed 
that he was to have a fourth night’s ride and wakefulness before his 
business was ended. 

He ran to the curate’s house in Kensington Mall, and asked for 
Mr. Bates, the name the Prince went by. The curate’s wife said 
Mr. Bates had gone abroad very early in the morning in his boots, 
saying he was going to the Bishop of Rochester’s house at Chelsey. 
But the Bishop had been at Kensington himself two hours ago to 
seek for Mr. Bates, and had returned in his coach to his own house, 
when he heard that the gentleman was gone thither to seek him. 

This absence was most un})ropitious, for an hour’s delay might 
cost a kingdom ; Esmond had nothing for it but to hasten to the 
“ King’s Arms,” and tell the gentlemen there assembled that Mr. 
George (as we called the Prince there) was not at home, but that 
Esmond would go fetch him ; and taking a General’s coach that 
happened to be there, Esmond drove across the country to Chelsey, 
to the Bishop’s house there. 

The porter said two gentlemen were with his Lordship, and 
Esmond ran past this sentry up to the locked door of the 
Bishop’s study, at which he rattled, and was admitted presently. 
Of the Bishop’s guests one was a brother prelate, and the other 
the Abb(^ G . 

“ Where is Mr. George ? ” says Mr. Esmond ; “ now is the 
time.” The Bishop looked scared: “I went to his lodging,” he 
said, “ and they told me he was come hither. I returned as quick 
as coach would carry me ; and he hatli not been here.” 

The Colonel burst out with an oath ; that was all he could say 
to their reverences : ran down the stairs again, and bidding the 
coachman, an old friend and fellow campaigner, drive as if he was 
charging the French with his master at Wynendael — they Avere 
back at Kensington in half-an-hour. 

Again Esmond went to the curate’s house. Mr. Bates had 
not returned. The Colonel had to go with this blank errand to 
the gentlemen at the King’s Arms,” that were grown very impatient 
by this time. 

Out of the window of the tavern, and looking over the garden 
wall, you can see the green before Kensington Palace, the Palace 
gate (round which the Ministers’ coaches were standing), and the 
barrack building. As we Avere looking out from this A^dndow in 
gloomy discourse, we heard presently trumpets bloAviug, and some 
of us ran to the windoAV of the front-room, looking into the High 
Street of Kensington, and saAV a regiment of horse coming. 

“ It’s Ormonde’s Guards,” says one. 


408 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ No, by God, it’s Argyle’s old regiment ! ” says my General, 
clapping down his crutch. 

It was, indeed, Argyle’s regiment that was brought from W est- 
minster, and that took the place of the regiment at Kensington on 
which we could rely. 

“ 0 Harry ! ” says one of the Generals there present, “ you 
were born under an unlucky star ; I begin to think that there’s no 
Mr. George, nor Mr. Dragon either. ’Tis not the peerage I care 
for, for our name is so ancient and famous, that merely to be called 
Lord Lydiard would do me no good ; but ’tis the chance you 
promised me of fighting Marlborough.” 

As we were talking, Castlewood entered the room with a dis- 
turbed air. 

“What news, Frank*?” says the Colonel. “Is Mr. George 
coming at last 1 ” 

“ Damn him, look here ! ” says Castlewood, holding out a 
paper. “ I found it in the book — the what you call it, ‘ Eikum 
Basilikum,’ — that villain Martin put it there — he said his young 
mistress bade him. It was directed to me, but it was meant for 
him I know, and I broke the seal and read it.” 

The whole assembly of officers seemed to swim away before 
Esmond’s eyes as he read the paper ; all that was written on it 
was : — “ Beatrix Esmond is sent away to prison, to Castlewood, 
where she will pray for happier days.” 

“ Can you guess where he is 1 ” says Castlewood. 

“ Yes,” says Colonel Esmond. He knew full well ; Frank knew 
full well : our instinct told whither that traitor had fled. 

He had courage to turn to the company and say : “ Gentlemen, 
I fear very much that Mr. George will not be here to-day ; some- 
thing hath happened — and — and — I very much fear some accident 
may befall him, which must keep him out of the way. Having 
had your noon’s draught, you had best pay the reckoning and go 
home ; there can be no game where there is no one to play it.” 

Some of the gentlemen went away without a word, others called 
to pay their duty to her Majesty and ask for her health. The 
little army disappeared into the darkness out of which it had been 
called ; there had been no writings, no paper to implicate any man. 
Some few officers and members of Parliament had been invited over 
night to breakfast at the “ King’s Arms,” at Kensington ; and they 
had called for their bill and gone home. 


CHAPTER XIII 
AUGUST 1ST, 1714 



OES iny mistress know of this ? ” Esmond asked of Frank, as 
they walked along. 


“ My mother found the letter in the book, on the toilet- 
table. She had writ it ere she had left home,” Frank said. 
“ Mother met her on the stairs, with her hand upon the door, trying 
to enter, and never left her after that till she went away. He did 
not think of looking at it there, nor had Martin the chance of 
telling him. I believe the poor devil meant no harm, though I 
half killed him; he thought ’twas to Beatrix’s brother he was 
bringing the letter.” 

Frank never said a word of reproach to me for having brought 
the villain amongst us. As we knocked at the door I said,’ “ When 
will the horses be ready?” Frank pointed with his cane, they 
were turning the street that moment. 

We went up and bade adieu to our mistress; she was in a 
dreadful state of agitation by this time, and that Bishop was with 
her whose company she was so fond of. 

“Did you tell him, my Lord,” says Esmond, “that Beatrix was 
at Castlewood?” The Bishop blushed and stammered: “Well,” 
says he, “ I ” 

“You served the villain right,” broke out Mr. Esmond, “and 
he has lost a crown by what you told him.” 

My mistress turned quite white. “ Henry, Henry,” says she, 
“do not kill him ! ” 

“ It may not be too late,” says Esmond ; “he may not' have 
gone to Castlewood; pray God, it is not too late.” The Bishop 
was breaking out with some hanale phrases about loyalty, and the 
sacredness of the Sovereign’s person ; but Esmond sternly bade him 
hold his tongue, burn all papers, and take care of Lady Castlewood ; 
and in five minutes he and Frank were in the saddle, John Lock- 
wood behind them, riding towards Castlewood at a rapid pace. 

We were just got to Alton, when who should meet us but old 
Lockwood, the porter from Castlewood, John’s father, walking by 
the side of the Hexton flying-coach, who slept the night at 


410 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


Alton. Lockwood said liis young mistress had arrived at home on 
Wednesday night, and this morning, Friday, had despatched him 
with a packet for my Lady at Kensington, saying the letter was of 
great importance. 

We took the freedom to break it, while Lockwood stared with 
wonder, and cried out his “ Lord bless me’s,” and “ Who’d a thought 
it’s,” at the sight of his young lord, whom he had not seen these 
seven years. 

The packet from Beatrix contained no news of importance at 
all. ' It was written in a jocular strain, affecting to make light of 
her captivity. She asked whether she might have leave to visit 
Mrs. Tusher, or to walk beyond the court and the garden wall. 
She gave news of the peacocks, and a fawn she had there. She 
bade her mother send her certain gowns and smocks by old Lock- 
Avood ; she sent her duty to a certain Person, if certain other 
persons permitted her to take such a freedom ; how that, as she 
was not able to play cards with him, she hoped he would read good 
books, such as Doctor Atterbury’s sermons and “Eikon Basilikd : ” 
she was going to read good books ; she thought her pretty mamma 
would like to know she was not crying her eyes out. 

“ Who is in the house besides you, LockAvood ? ” says the Colonel. 

“There be the laundry-maid, and the kitchen-maid. Madam 
Beatrix’s maid, the man from London, and that be all; and he 
sleepeth in my lodge away from the maids,” says old Lockwood. 

Esmond scribbled a line with a .pencil on the note, giving it 
to the old man, and bidding him go on to his lady. We knew Avhy 
Beatrix had been so dutiful on a sudden, and why she spoke of 
“ Eikon Basilikd.” She Avrit this letter to put the Prince on the 
scent, and the porter out of the way. 

“We have a fine moonlight night for riding on,” says Esmond; 
“ Frank, Ave may reach Castlewood in time yet.” All the way 
along they made inquiries at the post-houses, Avhen a tall young 
gentleman in a grey suit, with a light broAvn periwig, just the colour 
of my Lord’s, had been seen to pass. He had set off at six that 
morning, and Ave at three in the afternoon. He rode almost as 
quickly as AA^e had done; he was seven hours ahead of us still 
Avhen we reached the last stage. 

We rode over CastleAvood Downs before the breaking of dawn. 
We passed the very spot Avhere the car AAms upset fourteen years 
since, and Mohun lay. Tlie village AA^as not up yet, nor the forge 
lighted, as Ave rode through it, passing by the elms, Avhere the rooks 
were still roosting, and by the church, and over the bridge. We 
got off our horses at the bridge and Avalked up to the gate. 

“If she is safe,” says Frank, trembling, and his honest eyes 


411 


FATHER HOLT’S PRIVATE DOOR 

filling with tears, “ a silver statue to Our Lady ! ” He was going 
to rattle at the great iron knocker on the oak gate ; but Esmond 
stopped his kinsman’s hand. He had his own fears, his own 
hopes, his own despairs and griefs, too ; but he spoke not a word 
of these to his companion, or showed any signs of emotion. 

He went and tapped at the little window at the ])orter’s lodge, 
gently, but repeatedly, until tlie man came to the bars. 

“ Who’s there 'I ” says he, looking out. It was the servant 
from Kensington. 

“ My Lord Castlewood and Colonel Esmond,” we said, from 
below. “ Open the gate and let us in without any noise.” 

“ My Lord Castlewood '? ” says the other ; “my Lord’s here, 
and in bed.” 

“ Open, d you,” says Castlewood, with a. curse. 

“ I shall open to no one,” says the man, shutting the glass 
window as Frank drew a pistol. He would have fired at the 
porter, but Esmond again held his hand. 

“There are more ways than one,” says he, “ of entering such a 
great house as this.” Frank grumbled that the west gate was half- 
a-mile round. “ But I know of a way that’s not a hundred yards 
off,” says Mr Esmond ; and leading his kinsman close along the 
wall, and by the shrubs which had now grown thick on vdiat had 
been an old moat about the house, they came to the buttress, at 
the side of which the little window was, which was Father Holt’s 
private door. Esmond climbed up to this easily, broke a pane that 
had been mended, and touched the spring inside, and the two gentle- 
men passed in that way, treading as lightly as they could ; and so 
going through the passage into the court, over which the dawn was 
now reddening, and where the fountain plashed in tlie silence. 

They sped instantly to the porter’s lodge, where the fellow had 
not fastened his door that led into the court ; and pistol in hand 
came upon the terrified wretch, and bade him be silent. Then 
they asked him (Esmond’s head reeled, and he almost fell as he 
spoke) when Lord Castlewood had arrived 1 He said on the 
previous evening, about eight of the clock. — “And what then?” — 
His Lordship supped with his sister — “Did the man wait?” — 
Yes, he and my Lady’s maid both waited : the other servants 
made the supper ; and there was no wine, and they coidd give his 
Lordship but milk, at which he grumbled ; and — and Madam 
Beatrix kept Miss Lucy always in the room with her. And there 
being a bed across the court in the Chaplain’s room, she had arranged 
my Lord was to sleep there. Madam Beatrix had come downstairs 
laughing with the maids, and had locked herself in, and my Lord 
had stood for a while talking to her through the door, and she 


412 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

laughing at him. And tlien he paced the court awhile, and slie 
came again to the upper window ; and my Lord implored her to 
come down and walk in the room ; but she would not, and laughed 
at him a, gain, and shut the window ; and so my Lord, uttering 
what seemed curses, but in a foreign language, went to the Chaplain’s 
room to bed. 

“Was this alii” — “All,” the man swore upon his honour; all, 
as he hoped to be saved. — “ Stop, there was one thing more. My 
Lord, on arriving, and once or twice during supper, did kiss his 
sister, as was natural, and she kissed him.” At this Esmond 
ground his teeth with rage, and well-nigh throttled the amazed 
miscreant who was speaking, whereas Gas tie wood, seizing hold of 
his cousin’s hand, burst into a great fit of laughter. 

“If it amuses thee,” says Esmond in French, “that your sister 
should be exchanging of kisses with a stranger, I fear poor Beatrix 
will give thee plenty of sport.” — Esmond darkly thought, how 
Hamilton, Ashburnham, had before been masters of those roses 
that the young Prince’s lips were now feeding on. He sickened at 
that notion. Her cheek was desecrated, her beauty tarnished ; 
shame and honour stood between it and him. The love was dead 
within him ; had she a crown to bring him with her love, he felt 
that both would degrade him. 

But this wrath against Beatrix did not lessen the angry feelings 
of the Colonel against the man wlio had been the occasion if not 
the cause of the evil. Frank sat down on a stone bench in the 
courtyard, and fairly fell asleep, while Esmond paced uj) and down 
the court, debating what should ensue. What mattered how much 
or how little had passed between tlie Prince and the poor faithless 
girl 1 They were arrived in time perhaps to rescue her person, but 
not her mind : had she not instigated tlie young Prince to come to 
her, suborned servants, dismissed others, so that she might com- 
municate with himi The treacherous heart within her had sur- 
rendered, tliough the place was safe ; and it was to win tliis that 
he had given a life’s struggle and devotion ; this, that she was 
ready to give away for the bribe of a coronet or a wink of the 
Prince’s eye. 

When he had thought his thoughts out he shook up poor Frank 
from his sleep, wlio rose yawning, and said he had been dreaming 
of Clotilda. “ You must back me,” says Esmond, “ in what I am 
going to do. I have been thinking that yonder scoundrel may 
have been instructe<l to tell that story, and that the whole of it 
may be a lie ; if it be, we shall find it out from the gentleman who 
is asleep yonder. See if the door leading to my Lady’s rooms” 
(so we called the rooms at the north-west angle of the house), “ see 


413 


TOO MUCH OF MAJESTY 

if the door is barred as he saithJ’ We tried; it was indeed as the 
lacquey liad said, closed within. 

“ It may have been opened and shut afterwards,” says poor 
Esmond ; “ the foundress of our family let our ancestor in in 
that way.” 

“ What will you do, Harry, if— if what that fellow saith should 
turn out untrue ? ” The young man looked scared and frightened 
into his kinsman’s face ; I dare say it wore no very ])leasant 
expression. 

“ Let us first go see whether the two stories agree,” says 
Esmond ; and went in at the passage and opened the door into 
what had been his own chamber now for well-nigh five-and-twenty 
years. A candle was still burning, and the Prince asleep dressed 
on the bed — Esmond did not care for making a noise. The Prince 
started up in his bed, seeing two men in his chamber ; “ Qui est 
Ih, ? ” says he, and took a pistol from under his pillow. 

“It is the Marquis of Esmond,” says the Colonel, “come to 
welcome his Majesty to his house of Castlewood, and to report 
of what hath happened in London. Pursuant to the King’s orders, 
I passed the night before last, after leaving his Majesty, in waiting 
upon the friends of the King. It is a pity that his Majesty’s desire 
to see the country and to visit our poor house should have caused 
the King to quit London without notice yesterday, when the oppor- 
tunity happened which in all human probability may not occur 
again ; and had the King not chosen to ride to Castlewood, the 
Prince of Wales might have slept at St. James’s.” 

“’Sdeath! gentlemen,” says the Prince, starting off his bed, 
whereon he was lying in his clothes, “ the Doctor was with me 
yesterday morning, and after watching by my sister all night, told 
me I might not hope to see the Queen.” 

“ It would have been otherwise,” says Esmond with another 
bow ; “as, by this time, the Queen may be dead in spite of the 
Doctor. The Council was met, a new Treasurer was appointed, 
the troops were devoted to the King’s cause ; and fifty loyal gentle- 
men of the greatest names of this kingdom were assembled to 
accompany the Prince of Wales, who might have been the acknow- 
ledged heir of the throne, or the possessor of it by this time, had 
your Majesty not chosen to take the air. We were ready : there 
was only one person that failed us, your Majesty’s gracious ” 

“ Morbleu, monsieur, you give me too much Majesty,” said the 
Prince, who had now risen up and seemed to be looking to one of 
us to help him to his coat. But neither stirred. 

“We shall take care,” says Esmond, “not much oftener to 
offend in that particular.” 


414 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

“ What mean you, my LoiR ? ” says the Prince, and muttered 
something about a <juet-a-peris, which Esmond caught up. 

The snare, sir,” said he, ‘‘ was not of our laying ; it is not 
we that invited you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, 
the dishonour of our family.” 

“ Dishonour ! Morbleu, there has been no dishonour,” says the 
Prince, turning scarlet, “ only a little harmless playing.” 

“ That was meant to end seriously.” 

“I swear,” the Prince broke out impetuously, “upon the 
honour of a gentleman, my lords ” 

“That we arrived in time. No wrong hatli been done, Frank,” 
says Colonel Esmond, turning round to young Oastlewood, who 
stood at the door as the talk was going on. “ See ! here is a 
paper wliereon his Majesty hath deigned to commence some verses 
in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix, Here is ‘ Madame ’ and 
‘ Flainme,’ ‘Cruelle’ and ‘ Rebelle,’ and ‘Amour’ and ‘Jour,’ in 
the Royal writing and spelling. Had the Gracious lover been 
happy, he had not passed his time in sighing.” In fact, and 
actually as he was speaking, Esmond cast Ids eyes down towards 
the table, and saw a paper on which my young Prince had been 
scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer on the morrow. 

“ Sir,” says the Prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his 
Royal coat unassisted by this time), “did I come here to receive 
insults ] ” 

“ To confer them, may it please your Majesty,” says the Colonel, 
with a very low bow, “ and the gentlemen of our family are come 
to thank you.” 

“ Malediction ! ” says the young man, tears starting into his 
eyes with helpless rage and mortification. “ What will you with 
me, gentlemen?” 

“ If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment,” 
says Esmond, preserving his grave tone, “ I have some papers there 
which I would gladly submit to you, and by your permission I 
will lead the way ; ” and, taking the taper up, and backing before 
the Prince witli very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed into the 
little Chaplain’s room, through which we had just entered into the 
liouse. “ Please to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank,” says the 
Colonel to his companion, who wondered almost as much at this 
scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other actor in it. 
Then going to the crypt over the mantelpiece, the Colonel opened 
it, and drew thence the papers which so long had lain there. 

“ Here, may it please your Majesty,” says he, “ is the Patent 
of Marquis sent over by your Royal Father at St. Germains to 
Viscount Castlewood, my father : here is the witnessed certificate 


“RESIGNO QU^ DEBIT 


415 


of my father’s marriage to my mother, and of my birth and christen- 
ing ; -I was christened of that religion of which yonr sainted sire 
gave all through life so shining an example. These are my titles, 
dear Frank, and this what I do with them : here go Baptism and 
Marriage, and here the Marquisate and the August Sign-Manual, 
with which your predecessor was pleased to honour our race.” And 
as Esmond spoke he set the papers burning in the brazier. “ You 
will please, sir, to remember,” he continued, “that our family hath 
ruined itself by fidelity to yours : that my grandfather spent his 
estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service ; that 
my dear lord’s grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right 
and title too) died for the same cause ; that my poor kinswoman, 
my father’s second wife, after giving away her honour to your 
wicked perjured race, sent all her wealth to the King; and got 
in return that precious title that lies in ashes, and this inestimable 
yard of blue riband. I lay this at your feet and stamp upon it : 
I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; and, had you 
completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have 
driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than 
your father pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the same, won’t 
you, cousin'?” 

Frank, who had been looking on with a stupid air at the papers 
as they fiained in the old brazier, took out his sword and broke it, 
holding his head down : — “ I go with my cousin,” says he, giving 

Esmond a grasp of the hand. Marquis or not, by , I stand by 

him any day. I beg your Majesty’s pardon for swearing ; that is — 
that? is — I’m for the Elector of Hanover. It’s all your Majesty’s 
own fault. The Queen’s dead most likely by this time. And you 
might have been King if you hadn’t come dangling after Trix.” 

“ Thus to lose a crown,” says the young Prince, starting up, and 
speaking French in his eager way ; “to lose the loveliest woman in 
the world ; to lose the loyalty of such hearts as yours, is not this, 
my lords, enough of humiliation ? — Marquis, if I go on my knees 
will you pardon me? — No, I can’t do that, but I can offer you 
reparation, that of honour, that of gentlemen. Favour me by cross- 
ing tlie sword with mine : yours is broke — see, yonder in the arrnoire 
are two ; ” and the Prince took them out as eager as a boy, and 
held them towards Esmond : — “ Ah ! you will ? Merci, monsieur, 
merci ! ” 

Extremely touched by this immense mark of condescension and 
repentance for wrong done. Colonel Esmond bowed down so low as 
almost to kiss the gracious young hand that conferred on him such 
an honour, and took his guard in silence. The swords were no 
sooner met, tlian Castlewood knocked up Esmond’s with the blade 


(Orrgiifif^ 


416 THE HISTOKY OF HENRY ESMOND 


of his own, which he had broke off short at the shell ; and the 
Colonel falling back a step dropped his point with another very low 
bow, and declared himself perfectly satisfied. 

“ Eh bien, Vicomte ! ” says the young Prince, who was a boy, 
and a French boy, “ il ne nous reste qu’une chose h faire : ” he 
placed his sword upon the table, and the fingers of his two hands 
upon his breast : — “ We have one more thing to do,” says he ; “ you 
do not divine it '? ” He stretched out his arms : — “ J^Jmbrassons 
nous ! ” 

The talk was scarce over when Beatrix entered the room : — 
What came she to seek there 'I She started and turned pale at the 
sight of her brother and kinsman, drawn swords, broken sword- 
blades, and papers yet smouldering in the brazier. 

“ Charming Beatrix,” says the Prince, with a blush which be- 
came him very well, “these lords have come a-horseback from 
London, where my sister lies in a despaired state, and where her 
successor makes himself desired. Pardon me for my escapade of 
last evening. I had been so long a prisoner, that I seized the 
occasion of a promenade on horseback, and my horse naturally bore 
me towards you. I found you a queen in your little court, where 
' you deigned to entertain me. Present my homages to your maids 
of honour. I sighed as you slept, under the window of your 
^- chamber, and then retired to seek rest in my own. It was there 
ythat these gentlemen agreeably roused me. Yes, milords, for that 
is a happy day that makes a Prince acquainted, at whatever cost to 
his vanity, with such a noble heart as that of the Marquis of 
Esmond. Mademoiselle, may we take your coach to town ? I saw 
it in the hangar, and this poor Marquis must be dropping with 
sleep.” 

“Will it please the King to breakfast before he goes ? ” was all 
Beatrix could say. The roses Jiad shuddered out of her cheeks ; 
her eyes were glaring; she looked quite old. She came up to 
Esmond and hissed out a word or two : — “ If I did not love you 
before, cousin,” says she, “think how I love you now.” If words 
could stab, no doubt she would have killed Esmond ; she looked at 
him as if she could. 

But her keen words gave no wound to Mr. Esmond ; his heart 
was too hard. As he looked at her, he wondered that he could 
ever have loved her. His love of ten years was over ; it fell down 
dead on the spot, at the Kensington tavern, where Frank brought 
him the note out of “Eikon Basilik^.” The Prince blushed and 
bowed low, as she gazed at him, and quitted the chamber. I have 
never seen her from that day. 

Horses were fetched and put to the chariot presently. My 









I 



WE JOURNEY LONDONWARDS 417 

Lord rode outside, and as for Esmond lie was so tired that he was 
no sooner in the carriage than he fell asleep, and never woke till 
night, as the coach came into Alton. 

As we drove to the “ Bell Inn ” comes a mitred coach with 
our old friend Lockwood beside the coachman. My Lady Castle- 
wood and the Bishop were inside ; she gave a little scream when 
she saw us. The two coaches entered the inn almost together ; 
the landlord and people coming out with lights to welcome the 
visitors. 

We in our coach sprang out of it, as soon as ever we saw the 
dear lady, and above all, the Doctor in his cassock. What was the 
news'? Was there yet time? Was the Queen alive? These 
questions were put hurriedly, as Boniface stood waiting before his 
noble guests to bow them up the stair. 

“ Is she safe ? ” was what Lady Castlewood whispered in a 
flutter to Esmond. 

“ All’s well, thank God,” says he, as the fond lady took his 
hand and kissed it, and called him her preserver and her dear. 
She wasn’t thinking of Queens and crowns. 

The Bishop’s news was reassuring; at least all was not lost; 
the Queen yet breathed, or was alive when they left London, six 
hours since. (“ It was Lady Castlewood who insisted on coming,” 
the Doctor said.) Argyle had marched up regiments from Ports- 
mouth, and sent abroad for more ; the Whigs were on the alert, a 
pest on them (I am not sure but the Bishop swore as he spoke), 
and so too were our people. And all might be saved, if only the 
Prince could be at London in time. We called for horses, instantly 
to return to London. We never went up poor crestfallen Boni- 
face’s stairs, but into our coaches again. The Prince and his Prime 
Minister in one, Esmond in the other, with only his dear mistress 
as a companion. 

Castlewood galloped forwards on horseback to gather the 
Prince’s friends and warn them of his coming. We travelled 
through the night — Esmond discoursing to his mistress of the 
events of the last twenty-four hours : of Castlewood’s ride and his ; 
of the Prince’s generous behaviour and their reconciliation. The 
night seemed short enough ; and the starlit hours passed away 
serenely in that fond company. 

So we came along the road ; the Bishop’s coach heading ours ; 
and, Avith some delays in procuring horses, we got to Hammersmith 
about four o’clock on Sunday morning, the first of August, and 
half-an-hour after, it being then bright day, we rode by my Lady 
Warwick’s house, and so down the street of Kensington. 

Early as the hour was, there was a bustle in the street, and 
7 2d 


418 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 

many people moving to and fro. Round the gate leading to the 
Palace, where the guard is, there was especially a great crowd. 
And the coach ahead of us stoi)ped, and the Bishop’s man got 
down to know what the concourse meant. 

There presently came from out of the gate — Horse Guards with 
their trumpets, and a company of heralds with their tabards. The 
trumpets blew, and the herald-at-arms came forward and proclaimed 
George, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and 
Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith. And the people shouted, 
God save the King ! 

Among the crowd shouting and waving their hats, I caught 
sight of one sad face, which I had known all my life, and seen 
under many disguises. It was no other than poor Mr. Holt’s, who 
had slipped over to England to witness the triumph of the good 
cause ; and now beheld its enemies victorious, amidst the acclama- 
tions of the English people. The poor fellow had forgot to huzzah 
or to take his hat off, until his neighbours in the crowd remarked 
his want of loyalty, and cursed him for a Jesuit in disguise, when 
he ruefully uncovered and began to cheer. Sure he was the most 
unlucky of men : he never played a game but he lost it ; or engaged 
in a conspiracy but ’twas certain to end in defeat. I saw him in 
Flanders after this, whence lie went to Rome to the headquarters 
of his Order ; and actually reappeared among us in America, very 
old, and busy, and hopeful. I am not sure that he did not assume 
the hatchet and moccasins there; and, attired in a blanket and 
war-paint, skulk about a missionary amongst tlie Indians. He 
lies buried in our neighbouring province of Maryland now, with a 
cross over him, and a mound of earth above him ; under which that 
unquiet spirit is for ever at peace. 

With the sound of King George’s trumpets, all the vain hopes 
of the weak and foolish young Pretender were blown away; and 
with that music, too, I may say, the drama of my own life was 
ended. That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, 
cannot be written in words; ’tis of its nature sacred and secret, 
and not to be spoken of, though the heart be ever so full of thank- 
fulness, save to Heaven and the One Ear alone — to one fond being, 
the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with. 
As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, 
and of the depth and intensity of that love which, for so many 
years, hath blessed me, I own to a transport of wonder and grati- 
tude for such a boon — nay, am thankful to have been endowed Avith 
a lieart capable of feeling and knowing the immense beauty and 
value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me. Sure, love 


MY CROWNING HAPPINESS 419 

vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious 
than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who 
knows not that : he hath not felt the highest faculty of the 
soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the name of my wife I write 
the completion of hope, and the summit of happiness. To have 
such a love is the one blessing, in comparison of which all earthly 
joy is of no value ; and to think of her, is to praise God. 

It was at Bruxelles, whither we retreated after the failure of 
our plot — our Whig friends advising us to keep out of the way — 
that the great joy of my life was bestowed upon me, and that my 
dear mistress became my wife. We had been so accustomed to an 
extreme intimacy and confidence, and had lived so long and tenderly 
together, that we might have gone on to the end without thinking 
of a closer tie ; but circumstances brought about that event which 
so prodigiously multiplied my happiness and hers (for which I 
humbly thank Heaven), although a calamity befell us, which, I 
blush to think, hath occurred more than once in our house. I know 
not what infatuation of ambition urged the beautiful and wayward 
woman, whose name hath occupied so many of these pages, and 
who was served by me with ten years of such constant fidelity and 
passion ; but ever after that day at Castlewood, when we rescued 
her, she persisted in holding all her family as her enemies, and left 
us, and escaped to France, to what a fate I disdain to tell. Nor 
was her son’s house a home for my dear mistress ; my poor Frank 
was weak, as perhaps all our race hath been, and led by women. 
Those around him were imperious, and in a terror of his mother’s 
influence over him, lest he should recant, and deny the creed which 
he had adopted by their persuasion. The difference of their religion 
separated the son and the mother : my dearest mistress felt that 
she was severed from her children and alone in the world — alone 
but for one constant servant on whose fidelity, praised be Heaven, 
she could count. ’Twas after a scene of ignoble quarrel on the 
part of Frank’s wife and mother (for the poor lad had been made to 
marry the whole of that German family with whom he had con- 
nected himself), that I found my mistress one day in tears, and 
then besought her to confide herself to the care and devotion of one 
who, by God’s help, would never forsake her. And then the tender 
matron, as beautiful in her autumn, and as pure as virgins in their 
spring, with blushes of love and “ eyes of meek surrender,” yielded 
to my respectful importunity, and consented to share my home. 
Let the last words I write thank her, and bless her who hath 
blessed it. 

By the kindness of Mr. Addison, all danger of prosecution, and 
every obstacle against our return to England, was removed ; and 


420 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND 


my son Frank’s gallantry in Scotland made his peace with tlie 
King’s Government. But we two cared no longer to live in Eng- 
land : and Frank formally and joyfully yielded over to us the pos- 
session of that estate which we now occupy, far away from Europe 
and its troubles, on the beautiful banks of the Potomac, where we 
have built a new Castlewood, and think with grateful hearts of our 
old home. In our Transatlantic country we have a season, the 
calmest and most delightful of the year, which we call the Indian 
summer : I often say the autumn of our life resembles that happy 
and serene weather, and am thankful for its rest and its sweet sun- 
shine. Heaven hath blessed us with a child, which each parent 
loves for her resemblance to the other. Our diamonds are turned 
into ploughs and axes for our plantations ; and into negroes, the 
happiest and merriest, I think, in all this country : and the only 
jewel by which my wife sets any store, and from which she hath 
never parted, is that gold button she took from my arm on the day 
when she visited me in prison, and which she wore ever after, as 
she told me, on the tenderest heart in the world. 


THE LECTURES 


THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


/ 




THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


OP THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY* 


SWIFT 

I N treating of the English Humourists of the past age, it is of 
the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I 
ask permission to speak to you ; and in doing so, you are aware 
that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humourous or 
facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a 
very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melan- 
choly patient whom the doctor advised to go and see Harlequin f — 
a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self 
must always be serious to him, under whatever mask or disguise 
or uniform he presents it to the public. And as all of you here 
must needs be grave when you think of your own past and present, 
you will not look to find, in the histories of those whose lives and 
feelings I am going to try and describe to you, a story that is other- 
wise than serious, and often very sad. If Humour only meant 
laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humourous 
writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, 
who possesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. 
But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence 
here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a 
great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. 
The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, 

* The notes to these lectures were chiefly written by James Hannay. A few 
corrections and additions, chiefly due to later investigations, are now inserted ; 
for which the publishers have to thank Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Sidney Lee, 
and Mr. L. Stephen. 

f The anecdote is frequently told of our performer John Rich (i682?-i76i), 
who first introduced pantomimes, and himself acted Harlequin. 

423 


424 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


yoiir pity, your kindness — your scorn for untruth, pretension, im- 
posture — your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, tlie 
unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all 
the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon him- 
self to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he 
finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem 
him — sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark other 
people’s lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his life when he has 
gone — and yesterday’s preacher becomes the text for to-day’s sermon. 

Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergymen,* 
Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after the death of 
his father, Avho had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy 
went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, 
Dublin, where he got a degree with difiiculty, and was wild, and 
witty, and poor. In 1688, by the recommendation of his mother. 
Swift was received into the family of Sir William Temple, who had 
known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in 1694, and the 
next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish 
preferment which he got and returned to Temple, in whose family 
he remained until Sir William’s death in 1699. His hopes of 
advancement in England failing. Swift returned to Ireland, and took 
the living of Laracor. Hither he invited Esther Johnson,! Temple’s 

* He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His grand- 
father, the Reverend Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, suf- 
fered for his loyalty in Charles I.’s time. That gentleman married Elizabeth 
Dryden, a member of the family of the poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his char- 
acteristic minuteness in such points, the exact relationship between these famous 
men. Swift was “ the son of Dryden’s second cousin.” Swift, too, was the enemy 
of Dryden’s reputation. Witness the " Battle of the Books ” ; — “ The difference 
was greatest among the horse,” says he of the moderns, “where every private 
trooper pretended to the command^ from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and 
Withers.” And in Poetry, a Rhapsody, he advises the poetaster to — 

“ Read all the Prefaces of Dryden, 

For these our critics much confide in. 

Though merely writ, at first for filling. 

To raise the volume’s price a shilling.” 

“Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,” was the phrase of Dryden to his 
kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters. 

t “Miss Hetty ” she was called in the family— where her face, and her dress, 
and Sir William’s treatment of her, all made the real fact about her birth plain 
enough. Sir William left her a thousand pounds. [The statement that Esther 
Johnson was Temple’s natural daughter, was first made by a writer in the 
Gentlema?i' s Magazine for 1757, who also asserted that Swift was Temple’s natural 
son; and that a discovery of their relationship was the secret of Swift’s melancholy. 
The statement about Swift is inconsistent with known dates. The story about 
Esther may be true, but it depends mainly upon late and anonymous evidence.] 


SWIFT 


425 


natural daughter, with whom he had contracted a tender iendship 
while they were both dependants of Temple’s. And with an 
occasional visit to England, Swift now passed nine years at home. 

In 1710 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ireland, 
during which he took possession of his deanery of Saint Patrick, 
he now passed four years in England, taking the most distinguished 
part in the political transactions which terminated with the death 
of Queen Anne. After her death, his party disgraced, and his hopes 
of ambition over. Swift returned to Dublin, where he remained 
twelve years. In this time he wrote the famous “Drapier’s 
Letters ” and “ Gulliver’s Travels.” He married * Esther Johnson 
(Stella), and buried Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa), who had followed 
him to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent 
passion for him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which 
he quitted for the last time on hearing of his wife’s illness. Stella 
died in January 1728, and Swift not until 1745, having passed the 
last five of the seventy-eight years of his life with an impaired 
intellect, and keepers to watch hirn.t 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers ; 
his life has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, 
Scott, who admires but can’t bring himself to love him; and by 
stout old Johnson, J who, forced to admit him into the company of 

* The marriage is accepted by Swift’s last biographer, Sir H. Craik, It was 
disbelieved by Forster, and cannot be regarded as certain. 

t Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about the 
house for many consecutive hours ; sometimes he remained in a kind of torpor. 
At times he would seem to struggle to bring into distinct consciousness, and 
shape into expression the intellect that lay smothering under gloomy obstruc- 
tion in him. A pier-glass falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said he 
wished it had! He once repeated slowly several times, “ I am what I am." 
The last thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for 
arms and stores, which was pbinted out to him as he went abroad during his 
mental disease ; — 

‘ ‘ Behold a proof of Irish sense : 

Here Irish wit is seen ; 

When nothing’s left that’s worth defence. 

They build a magazine ! ’’ 

J Besides these famous books of Scott’s and Johnson’s, there is a copious 
‘‘Life’’ by Thomas Sheridan (Doctor Johnson’s ‘‘Sherry’’), father of Richard 
Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever Irish Doctor Thomas Sheridan, 
Swift’s intimate, who lost his chaplaincy by so unluckily choosing for a text 
on the King’s birthday, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!” Not to 
mention less important works, there is also the Remarks on the Life and 
Writings of Doctor Jonathan Swift, by that polite and dignified writer, the 
Earl of Orrery. His Lordship is said to have striven for literary renown, 
chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him by his father, who 


426 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him 
with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from liead to foot, and 
passes over to the other side of the street. Doctor (afterwards Sir 
\V. R.) Wilde of Dublin,* who has written a most interesting 
volume on the closing years of Swift’s life, calls Johnson “the most 
malignant of his biographers : ” it is not easy for an English critic 
to please Irishmen — perhaps to try and please them. And yet 
Johnson truly admires Swift : Johnson does not cpiarrel with Swift’s 
change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion : about the famous 
Stella' and Vanessa controversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly 
on Swift. But he could not give the Dean that honest hand of his ; 
the stout old man puts it into his breast, and moves otf from him.f 
Would we have liked to live with himi That is a question 
which, in dealing with these people’s works, and thinking of their 
lives and peculiarities, every reader of biographies must put to 
himself Would you have liked to be a friend of the great Dean '? 
I should like to have been Shakspeare’s shoeblack — ^just to have 
lived in his house, just to have worshipped him — to have run on 
his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should like, as a 
young man, to have lived on Fielding’s staircase in the Temple, 
and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door 
with his latchkey, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, 
and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug 
of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at 
the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esquire, 

left his library away from him. It is to be feared that the ink he used to wash 
out that stain only made it look bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and 
corresponded with people who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) 
provoked a good deal of controversy, calling out, among other brochures, the 
interesting Observations on Lord Orerrys Reynarks, &c. , of Doctor Delany. 

* Wilde’s book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and 
Stella being brought to the light of day — a thing which happened in 1835, 
when certain works going on in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, afforded an 
opportunity of their being examined. One hears with surprise of these skulls 
“going the rounds” of houses, and being made the objects of dilettante 
curiosity. The larynx of Swift was actually carried off! Phrenologists had a 
low opinion of his intellect from the observations they took. 

Wilde traces the symptoms of ill-health in Swift, as detailed in his writings 
from time to time. He observes, likewise, that the skull gave evidence of 
“diseased action" of the brain during life — such as would be produced by an 
increasing tendency to “cerebral congestion.” [In 1882 Dr Bucknell wrote an 
interesting article to show that Swift’s disease was 'labyrinthine vertigo,’ an 
affection of the ear, which would account for some of the symptoms.] 

t “ He [Doctor Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice 
against Swift ; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had personally 
offended him, and he told me he had not." — Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides. 


SWIFT 


427 


of Auchinleck ? The charm of Addison’s companionship and con- 
versation has passed to us by fond tradition — but Swift? If you 
had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for 
all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere 
social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you ; 
if, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, 
he would have quailed before you,* and not had the pluck to reply, 
and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram about you — 
watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a 
coward’s blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with 
a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, 
he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He 
would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, 
that you might think he had no object in view but the indidgence 
of his humour, and that he was the most reckless simple creature 
in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to pieces 
for you ! and made fun of the Opposition ! His servility was so 
boisterous that it looked like independence ; f he would have done 
your errands, but with the air of patronising you ; and after fighting 
your battles, masked, in the street or the press, would have kept 
on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing-room, 

* Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success was 
encouraging. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean whether his 
uncle Godwin had not given him his education. Swift, who hated that subject 
cordially, and, indeed, cared little for his kindred, said sternly, “Yes; he gave 
me the education of a dog.” “Then, sir, ’ cried the other, striking his fist on 
the table, “ you have not the gratitude of a dog ! ” 

Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even 
after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself 
into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circumstances may 
be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin 
lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettesworth — 

“ Thus at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, 

Though half-a-crown o’erpays his sweat’s worth. 

Who knows in law nor text nor margent. 

Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant ! ” 

The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at the 
deanery. The Dean asked his name. “ Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es-worth.” 

‘ ‘ In what regiment, pray f ” asked Swift. 

A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this time. 

f “ But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments from 
you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might 
occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a 
distance. His spirit, for I would give it the softest name, was ever untractable. 
The motions of his genius were often irregular. He assumed more the air of 
a patron than of a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise.”— 


428 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous services as a 
bravo.* 

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke : 
— “All my endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of 
a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those 
who have an opinion of my parts ; whether right or wrong is no 
great matter. And so the reputation of wit and great learning does 
the office of a blue riband or a coacli-and-six.” t 

Could there be a greater candour 1 It is an outlaw, who says, 
“ These are my brains ; with these I’ll win titles and compete with 
fortune. These are my bullets ; these I’ll turn into gold ; ” and he 
hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, 
and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees 
before him. Down go my Lord Bishop’s apron, and his Grace’s 
blue riband, and my Lady’s brocade petticoat in the mud. He 
eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a 
little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of 
his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the 
mitre and crozier in it, which he intends to have for A^s share, has 
been delayed on the way from Saint James’s; and he waits and waits 

An anecdote, which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well 
attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine with the 
Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The Earl, it is supposed, 
being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady, nor 
mention his name. After dinner said the Dean, ‘ Lady Burlington, I hear you 
can sing; sing me a song.’ The lady looked on this unceremonious manner 
of asking a favour with distaste, and positively refused. He said, ‘ She should 
sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of 
your poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.’ As the Earl did 
nothing but laugh at this freedom, die lady was so vexed that she burst into 
tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, 

‘ Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last? ’ 
To which she answered with great good-humour, ‘ No, Mr. Dean ; Pll sing for 
you if you please.’ From which time he conceived a great esteem for her.” 
— Scott’s Life. “ . . . He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversa- 
tion. He was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. W^hen he 
was polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was 
constant and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities.” — Orrery. 

t ” I make no figure but at Court, where I affect to turn from a lord to the 
meanest of my acquaintances. " — Journal to Stella. 

“I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their 
books and poems, the vilest I ever saw ; but I have given their names to my 
man, never to let them see me.” — Journal to Stella. 

The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier 
“ Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left ear, 
just as I do? . . . I dare not tell him that I am so, for fear he should think 
that I counterfeited to make my court {"—Journal to Stella. 


SWIFT 


429 

until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach 
has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols 
into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.* 
Swift s seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral 
or adorn a tale of ambition as any hero’s that ever lived and 
failed. But we must remember that the morality was lax — that 
other gentlemen besides himself took the road in his day — that 
public society was in a strange disordered condition, and the State 
was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was being fought 
and won, and lost — the bells rung in William’s victory, in the very 
same tone with which they would have pealed for James’s. Men 
were loose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as 
well as old beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone 
adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble, almost everybody 
gambled ; as in the Railway mania — not many centuries ago — • 
almost every one took his unlucky share : a man of that time, of 
the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do otherwise 
than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his opportunity. 

* The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other: 
and the Whig attacks made the Ministry Swift served very sore. Boling- 
broke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their 
“ factitiousness ” in the following letter : — 

Bolingbroke to the Earl of Strafford. 

“Whitehall: July 1712. 

“It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too 
weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken 
the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are 
in the first degrees of honour. This, my Lord, among others, is a symptom of 
the decayed condition of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we 
mistake licentiousness for liberty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the 
printer, to send him to Newgate, and to bind him over upon bail to be pro- 
secuted ; this I have done ; and if I can arrive at legal proof against the author, 
Ridpath, he shall have the same treatment.” 

Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous indignation. In the 
history of the last four years of the Queen, the Dean speaks in the most edifying 
manner of the licentiousness of the press and the abusive language of the other 
party : — • 

“ It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have been such 
as to deserve the severest animadversion from the public. . . . The adverse 
party, full of rage and leisure since their fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ 
a set of writers by subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defama- 
tion, and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of their readers. , . . 
However, the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant to be cured- by such a 
remedy as a tax upon small papers, and a Bill for a much more effectual 
regulation of it was brought into the House of Commons, but so late in the 


430 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy are 
ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind’s 
unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigation. His 
youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble 
ties, and powerless in a mean dependence ; his age was bitter,* like 
that of a great genius, that had fought the battle and nearly won 
it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards, writhing in a lonely 
exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused 
by his .own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man 
— what statesman projecting a coup — what king determined on an 
invasion of his neighbour — what satirist meditating an onslaught 
on society or an individual, can’t give a pretext for his move? 
There was a French General the other day who proposed to march 
into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for 
humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen : there is always 

session that there was no time to pass it, for there always appeared an unwilling- 
ness to cramp overmuch the liberty of the press.” 

But to a clause in the proposed Bill, that the names of authors should be set 
to every printed book, pamphlet, or paper, his Reverence objects altogether ; 
for, says he, ‘ ‘ besides the objection to this clause from the practice of pious 
men, who, in publishing excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, 
out of an humble Christian spirit, to conceal their names, it is certain that all 
persons of true genius or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion 
of themselves upon first sending their thoughts into the world.” 

This " invincible modesty” was no doubt the sole reason which induced the 
Dean to keep the secret of the “ Drapier’s Letters ’’and a hundred humble 
Christian works of which he was the author. As for the Opposition, the 
Doctor was for dealing severely with them. He writes to Stella : — 

Journal. Letter XIX. 

“ London ; March 25th, 1710-11. 

”... We have let Guiscard be' buried at last, after showing him pickled in 
a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece ; and the fellow that showed would 
point to his body and say, ‘See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given 
him by his Grace the Duke of Ormond; ’ and ‘This is the wound,’ &c. ; and 
then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. ’Tis hard that our 
laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried ; 
and in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then. ...” 

Journal. Letter XX VII. 

” London : July 2^th, 1711. 

” I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder 
a man of his pardon, who was condemned for a rape. The Under-Secretary 
was w’lling to save him ; but I told the Secretary he could not pardon him 
without a favourable report from the Judge ; besides, he was a fiddler, and con- 
sequently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something else, and so he shall 
swing.” 

* It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of mourning. 


SWIFT 


431 


some excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their 
nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion.* 

As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong a wing as 
ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested 
the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One 
can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained 
behind the bars. 

That Swift was born at No. 7 Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on the 
30th November 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny 
the sister island the honour and glory ; but, it seems to me, he was 
no more an Irishman than a man born of English parents at Calcutta 
is a Hindoo.! Goldsmith was an Irishman, and always an Irish- 
man : Steele was an Irishman, and always an Irishman : Swift’s 
heart was English and in England, his habits English, his logic 

* "These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the Flying Post and 
Medley in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord 
Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecution, 
but Bolingbroke is not active enough ; but I hope to swinge him. He is a 
Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon bail, and write on. We take 
them again, and get fresh bail ; so it goes round.” — Journal to Stella. 

t Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations ; and his 
English birth makes its mark, strikingly enough, every now and then in his 
writings. Thus in a letter to Pope (Scott’s Swift, vol. xix. p. 97), he says : — 

" We have had your volume of letters. . . . Some of those who highly value 
you, and a few who knew you personally, are grieved to find you make no dis- 
tinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish 
(who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the 
kingdom) ; but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much 
more civilised than many counties in England, and speak better English, and 
are much better bred.” 

And again, in the fourth Drapier’s Letter, we have the following : — 

"A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. Wood 
to say ‘ that he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the Irish in refusing 
his coin.’ When, by the way, it is the true English people of Ireland who 
refuse it, although we take it for granted that the Irish will do so too whenever 
they are asked.” — Scott’s Swift, vol. vi. p. 453. 

He goes further, in a good-humoured satirical paper. On Barbarous De- 
nominations in Ireland, where (after abusing, as he was wont, the Scotch 
cadence, as well as expression) he advances to the "Irish Brogue,” and speak- 
ing of the " censure ” which it brings down, says : — 

"And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad consequence 
of this opinion affects those among us who are not the least liable to such 
reproaches farther than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of 
English parents, and whose education has been chiefly in that kingdom.” — 
Ibid. vol. vii. p. 149. 

But, indeed, if we are to make anything of Race at all, we must call that man 
an Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire family, and his 
mother from an old Leicestershire one ! 


432 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


eminently English ; his statement is elaborately simple ; he shuns 
tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise 
thrift and economy, as he used his money : with which he could be 
generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded 
when tliere was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless 
extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays 
his opinion before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neat- 
ness.* Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humour — above all, 
an Englishman of his humour — certainly would, he is afraid to use 
the poetical power which he really possessed ; one often fancies in 
reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might; that 
he does not speak above his voice, as it were, and the tone of 
society. 

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his know- 
ledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he 
could not have pursued very sedulously during that reckless career 
at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He 
was fond of telling in after life what quantities of books he devoured 
there, and how King William taught him to cut asparagus in the 
Dutch fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary 
of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upper servants’ table, that 
this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years’ apprenticeship — 
wore a cassock that was only not a livery — bent down a knee as 
proud as Lucifer’s to supplicate my Lady’s good graces, or run on 
his honour’s errands, f It was here, as he was writing at Temple’s 
table, or following his patron’s walk, tliat he saw and heard the 
men who had governed the great world — measured himself with 
them, looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed 
their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked them. Ah ! 

* "The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his 
writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a Sheriff’s feast, who 
amongst other toasts called out to him, ‘ Mr. Dean, The Trade of Ireland ! ’ 
he answered quick : ‘ Sir, I drink no memories ! ’ . . . 

" Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided 
himself on saying pert things . . . and who cried out—' You must know, Mr. 
Dean, that I set up for a wit ! ’ ‘Do you so ? ’ says the Dean. ‘ Take my advice, 
and sit down again ! ’ 

"At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long train 
[long trains were then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle and broke it ; Swift 
cried out — 

‘ Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae ! ’ ” 

—Dr. Delany: Observations upon Lord Orrery's "Remarks, ^c. on Srvift." 
London, 1754. 

t “ Don’t you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple 
would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect 


SWIFT 433 

wliat platitudes he must have heard ! what feeble jokes ! what 
pompous commonplaces ! what small men they must have seemed 
under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silent 
Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple, that 
that Irishman was his master'! I suppose that dismal conviction 
did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, or Temple could 
never have lived with Swift. Swift sickened, rebelled, left the 
service ate humble pie and came back again • and so for ten years 
went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn, and submitting with 
a stealthy rage to his fortune. 

Temple’s style is the perfection of practised and easy good 
breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he 
professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it ; if he makes 
rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was 
the custom for a gentleman to envelop his head in a periwig and 
his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed 
shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never 
hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady’s train or any 
rival’s heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too 
agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat 
of Shene or Moor Park ; and lets the King’s party and the Prince 
of Orange’s party battle it out among themselves. He reveres the 
Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever testified to his loyalty by so 
elegant a bow) ; he admires the Prince of Orange ; but there is 
one person whose ease and comfort he loves more than all the 
princes in Christendom, and that valuable member of society is 
himself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his 
retreat : between his study-chair and his tulip-beds,* clipping his 

a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirits since then, faith ; he spoiled 
a fine gentleman.” — Journal to Stella. 

[It should be added that this statement about the tv^^enty pounds a year, and the 
upper servants’ table, came from a hostile story told long afterwards by a nephew 
of Temple to Richardson the novelist. It is probably true enough of Swift’s 
first stay as a raw lad in the family ; but Temple came to value Swift’s services 
much more highly, and induced him to return from Ireland by promises of 
preferment. Temple’s death prevented their fulfilment, but it is clear that he 
had come to treat Swift with great respect.] 

* " . . . The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate 
in their expression, when they placed a man’s happiness in the tranquillity of 
his mind and indolence of body ; for while we are composed of both, I doubt 
both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages 
say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countries, 
constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very 
different expressions : what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by 
the sceptics, indisturbance ; by the Molinists, quietism ; by common men, peace 
of conscience — seems all to mean but great tranquillity of mind. ... For this 


434 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


axjricots and pruning bis essays, — the statesman, the ambassador 
no more; but the philosopher, the Epicui’ean, the fine gentleman 
and courtier at Saint James’s as at Shene ; where, in place of kings 
and fair ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty ; or 
walks a minuet with the Epic Muse ; or dallies by the south wall 
with the ruddy nymph of gardens. 

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal 
of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, and 
warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as delicately 
as any of the plants which he loved. When he fell ill in 1693, 
the household was aghast at his indisposition ; mild Dorothea his 
wife, the best companion of the best of men — 

“Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, 

Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate.” 

As for Dorinda, his sister, — 

“ Those who would grief describe, might come and trace 
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda’s face. 

To see her weep, joy every face forsook, 

And grief flung sables on each menial look. 

The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul. 

That furnished spirit and motion through the whole.” 

Isn’t that line in which grief is described as putting the menials 
into a mourning livery, a fine image 1 One of the menials wrote it, 

reason Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden ; there he studied, there he 
exercised, there he taught his philosophy ; and, indeed, no other sort of abode 
seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of mind and indolence of 
body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness 
of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise 
of working or walking ; but, above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, 
seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoy- 
ment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the body 
and mind. . . . Where Paradise was, has been much debated, and little agreed ; 
but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. It 
seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors 
mention it as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those 
Eastern countries, Strabo describing Jericho ; ‘ Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae 
sunt etiam alise stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio stadiorum 
centum, totus irriguus : ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.’ ” — Essay on Gardens. 

In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct and 
prudence he characteristically admires : — 

“. . . I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Stafford- 
shire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, though his soil 
be good enough, than to the perfection of plums ; and in these (by bestowing 
south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have 
done in attempts upon peaches and grapes ; and a good plum is certainly better 
than an ill peach." 


SWIFT 


435 


who did not like that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. 
Cannot one fancy the uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, 
books and papers in hand, following at his honour’s heels in the 
garden walk ; or taking his honour’s orders as he stands by the 
great chair, where Sir William has the gout, and his feet all 
blistered with moxa ? When Sir William has the gout or scolds it 
must be hard work at the second table ; * the Irish secretary owned 
as much afterwards ; and when he came to dinner, how he must 
have lashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes 
and scorn ! What would the steward say about the pride of them 
Irish schollards — and this one had got no great credit even at his 
Irish college, if the truth were known — and what a contempt his 
Excellency’s own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from 
Dublin ! (The valets and chaplains were always at war. It is 
hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And 
what must have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the 

* Swift’s Thoughts on Hanging. 

{Directions to Servants. ) 

“ To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities ; there- 
fore, when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at Court, a 
command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the 
revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or 
running away with your master’s niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go 
upon the road, which is the only post of honour left you : there you will meet 
many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one^ and make a 
figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some instructions. 

“ The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are going to 
be hanged : which, either for robbing your master, for housebreaking, or going 
upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, 
may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities : 
either a love of good-fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of 
spirits. Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole community : 
deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations : a hundred of your brethren, 
if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand 
to give you a character before the court ; let nothing prevail on you to confess, 
but the promise of a pardon for discovering your comrades : but I suppose all 
this to be in vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another 
day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate ; some of your 
kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with 
a crimson or black ribbon : take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate : 
mount the cart with courage ; fall on your knees ; lift up your eyes ; hold a 
book in your hands, although you cannot read a word ; deny the fact at the 
gallows; kiss and forgive the hangman, and so farewell: you shall be buried 
in pomp at the charge of the fraternity : the surgeon shall not touch a limb of 
you ; and your frame shall continue until a successor of equal renown succeeds 
in your place. ...” 


436 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


housekeeper’s little daughter with the curling black ringlets and the 
sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches her to read and 
write, and whom she loves and reverences above all things — above 
mother, above mild Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir William 
in his square toes and periwig, — when Mr. Swift comes down from 
his master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for 
little Hester Johnson? 

Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency’s condescension 
was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William ivould per- 
petually quote Latin and the ancient classics d propos of his gardens 
and his Dutch statues, and plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus 
and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Csesar, Semiramis, and the gardens 
of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the 
Assyrian kings. A j^ropos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras’s 
precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant 
that wise men should abstain from public affairs. He is a placid 
Epicurean ; Ae is a Pythagorean philosopher ; he is a wise man — 
that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so % One can imagine 
the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn 
which they emit. Swift’s eyes were as azure as the heavens ; Pope 
says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend 
was good and noble), “ His eyes are as azure as the heavens, 
and have a charming archness in them.” And one person in that 
household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven 
nowhere else. 

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with 
Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins ; and in 
a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where 
he devoured greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a 
vertigo and deafness which punished and tormented him through life. 
He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem 
of courtly condolence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock 
melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad 
shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own grief, cursing 
his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, and 
even hope. 

I don’t know anything more melancholy than the letter to 
Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor 
wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates 
his master’s anger. He asks for testimonials for orders 

“ The particulars required of me are what relate to morals and 
learning ; and the reasons of quitting your honour’s family — that is, 
whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are left 


SWIFT 


437 

entirely to yonr lionour’s mercy, though in the first I tliink I cannot 
reproach myself for anything further than for infirmities. This is 
all I dare at present beg from your honour, under circumstances of 
life not worth your regard : what is left me to wish (next to the 
health and prosperity of your honour and family) is that Heaven 
would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknow- 
ledgments at your feet. I beg my most humble duty and service 
be presented to my ladies, your honour’s lady and sister.” 

Can prostration fall deeper'? could a slave bow lower'?* 

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing the same 
man, says : — 

“Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from 
everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] 
to wait before prayers. Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk 
and business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his 

* “ He continued in Sir William Temple’s house till the death of that great 
man.” — Anecdotes of the Fa 7 nily of Swift, by the Dean. 

“ It has since pleased God to take this good and great person to himself.” — 
Preface to Temples Works. 

On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. [The 
letter given above was written 6th October 1694, and is humiliating enough. 
Swift’s relation to Temple changed, as already said. The passages, however, 
which follow, no doubt show a strong sense of “ indignities ” at one time or other.] 
But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indigni- 
ties he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Jownal 
to Stella : — 

“ I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d ailed him on 

Sunday : I made him a very proper speech ; told him I observed he was much 
out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be 
glad to see he was in better ; and one thing I warned him of — never to appear 
cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy ; that I had felt too much 
of that in my life already” [meaning Sir Willia 7 n Temple), &c. &c. — Journal 
to Stella. 

" I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple 
because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty ; and here is a young 
fellow hardly thirty in that employment.” — Ibid. 

‘ ‘ The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often 
thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of 
State.” — Ibid. 

“ Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite 
M^ell. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. 
He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with ; it put me in mind of Sir 
William Temple.” — Ibid. 

“ 1 thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir Willia 7 n'] and his wife pass by 
me to-day in their coach ; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly 
shaken off that family.” — S. to S., Sept. 1710. 


438 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He 
was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, 
that he should obtain a salary of ^200 per annum as member of 
the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, 
Esquire, going into the Queen with the red bag, and told him 
aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. 
He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained 
that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ‘ How 
can I help it,’ says the Doctor, ‘ if the courtiers give me a watch 
that won’t go right '? ’ Then he instructed a young nobleman, that 
the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a papist), who had begun 
a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have them 
all subscribe : ‘ For,’ says he, ‘ he shall not begin to print till I 
have a thousand guineas for him.’ * Lord Treasurer, after leaving 
the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Doctor Swift to 
follow him — both went off just before prayers.” f 

There’s a little malice in the Bishop’s “just before prayers.” 

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, 
though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to 
deserving men, too, in the midst of these intrigues and triumphs. 
His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts 
and rough manners. His hand was constantly stretched out to 
relieve an honest man — he was cautious about his money, but 
ready. If you were in a strait, would you like such a benefactor ? 
I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from 
Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and 
a dinner. I He insulted a man as he served him, made women 

* “Swift must be allowed,” says Doctor Johnson, “for a time, to have 
dictated the political opinions of the English nation. ” 

A conversation on the Dean’s pamphlets excited one of the Doctor’s liveliest 
sallies. “ One, in particular, praised his Conduct of the Allies. — Johnson : ‘ Sir, 
his Conduct of the Allies is a performance of very little ability. . . . Why, sir, 
Tom Davies might have written the Conduct of the Allies!'" — Boswell’s 
Life of Johnson. 

t The passage as quoted in the text is slightly abbreviated. It may be 
observed that Swift fulfilled his promises of support to the “clergyman,” 
Dr. Fiddes, author of a good life of Wolsey, and was very useful to Pope. 
Many other instances could be given of the “kind acts” mentioned in the 
next paragraph. 

J “ Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was 
his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that 
bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with 
good-humour, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any 
marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all 
further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of 





DEAN SWIFT AT COURT 




Vi 


' I 




v>- 


7’!, :» 




/’ V 






4.r\ 






ik -A 


*1iS 


y«* 


« 4 


»t 






i' 


i' 














i»A • N 


Jl: 






fl;- 


n- 


y V' 


VX4 




:rJ 


'I 




.■« 


» * 




I i 






t* 


1^' 




v^TT 


.-i i 






i>' 


rV. '^II. 


i;‘V 




r.*- 


\- 


'H' 


4 y ♦ I 


n 


, ^ ,!i?v‘ ><•:,- 


* / 


Lm' 


'•H# 


‘♦..tv ’r- 




»• • 




•_rt 


t? 


#> 


jfw 










" -'Vi i* 

>•»' 


1 




V^ 


• ’♦ 


v » 




r • 






.( (I 


iAi > 


J> 


V W 


»^l* 




i* ' • 


v.v 








% 


* t 


if 




i 


•»♦, • V 


Mi 




H 


‘V . i 


• ♦ ‘ fc 






•I,'. 


'trx^ V* 


V. ^ 0 




'Vv, 








D 






•) • 


X'-* 






w ; 


‘vi>; 






.•ftj 


' , A.’':' ■'*;: ¥ ' “■ 




■i* 


ri 


'3 


\-.y 


< r 


fi-: 


li 


9^ 




‘sv^- r\ ' 

MK' 




M 


y* 


♦ j 










%>/. 




A< ■ •' 




* - If- 

B.' 

'.( iM ii 


uy' 


rij 


> •» 






■4 .V' 


'il^. 




v^; 








‘ ' (’ 


■ 'i 


■V 


it** >• 




» *. 


.3W* 


■Vsl 








^ 1 






IT^. 








jw; 




.- J . • - ^ 


I V» 






.<«c 


4* 




:* */■: i.' , , 

... 


» i 


I V 




* '’A. 


•i4*', 




iU * 


F^C'kU'U. 


:•% 


f{ 1^. 


iA- r. 


4r A 






SWIFT 


439 

guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his 
benefactions into poor men’s faces. No ; the Dean was no Irishman 
— no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart. 

It is told, as if it were to Swift’s credit, that the Dean of 
Saint Patrick’s performed his family devotions every morning 
regularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his house were 
never in the least aware of the ceremony. There was no need 
surely why a Church dignitary should assemble his family privily 
in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. But 
I think the world was right, and the bishops who advised Queen 
Anne when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the 
“ Tale of a Tub ” to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The 
man who wrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, 
could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions 
which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Boling- 
broke, wlio chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of 
his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and 
joined in many a conversation over Pope’s port, or St. John’s bur- 
gundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men’s boards. 

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of 
Swift’s religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, 
and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the 
“ Beggar’s Opera ” — Gay, the wildest of the wits about town — it 
was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders — to invest 
in a cassock and bands — ^just as he advised him to husband his 
shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest. The Queen, 
and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting the religion 
of that man.* 

that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean, having decanted 
a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, 
presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. ‘ For,’ said he, ‘ I always keep 
some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me,’ Mr, Pilkington, entering into 
his humour, thanked him, and told him ‘he did not know the difference, but 
was glad to get a glass at any rate,’ ‘ Why, then,’ said the Dean, ‘ you shan’t, 

for I’ll drink it myself. Why, take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate 

whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago ; for upon my making the same 
speech to him, he said he did not understand such usage, and so walked off 
without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recom- 
mended him to me that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him,’ ” 
—Sheridan’s Life of Swift. 

* From the Archbishop of C as hell. 

“ Cashell : May 31 j/, 1735, 

“Dear Sir, — I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I 
am resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be overmatched ; 
and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I 


440 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


I am not here, of course, to speak of any man’s religious views, 
except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his 
humour. The most notorious sinners of all those fellow-mortals 
whom it is our business to discuss — Harry Fielding and Dick Steele 
— were especially loud, and I believe really fervent in their expres- 
sions of belief ; they belaboured freethinkers, and stoned imaginary 
atheists on all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl 
their own creed, and persecute their neighbour’s, and if they sinned 
and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with 
all sorts of bad behaviour, they got upon their knees and cried 

did endeavour in my last to put the best colour I could think of upon a very 
bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness ; but, in reality, it has 
hitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, arising from a thousand unlucky 
unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one troublesome 
affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime serjeant, I hope 
soon to get rid of ; and then you shall see me a true Irish bishop. Sir James 
Ware has made a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my pre- 
decessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland ; 
were consecrated such a year ; and if not translated, wei'e buried in the Cathedral 
Church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude that a good bishop 
has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die ; which laud- 
able example I propose for the remainder of my life to follow ; for to tell you the 
truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery, base- 
ness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on 
any man to endeavour to do good to so perverse a generation. 

" I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without 
doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover 
your flesh ; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a 
road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to 
Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles’ end. From 
Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all : but I have 
an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives 
in a neat thatched cabin a parson, who is not poor ; his wife is allowed to be 
the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale 
the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, 
of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine 
that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side ; and he cleans, and 
pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you 
with a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after dinner, 
we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine ; and by going through 
fields and bye-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the 
rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly 
very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before 
you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things 
prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him. Cope will come : he will do 
nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall 
add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your 
most faithful and obedient servant. 


“ Theo. Cashell.” 


SWIFT 


441 


“ Peccavi ” with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes ; poor Harry Field- 
ing and poor Dick Steele were trusty and imdoubting Church of Eng- 
land men ; they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes and 
idolatries in general ; and hiccupped Church and State with fervour. 

But Swift ] His mind had had a different schooling, and 
possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred up in 
a tipsy guardroom, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden 
tavern. He could conduct an argument from beginning to end. 
He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, 
looking at the “ Tale of a Tub,” when he said, “ Good God, what 
a genius I had when I wrote that book ! ” I think he was admir- 
ing, not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had 
brought him — a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonder- 
fully bright, and dazzling, and strong, — to seize, to know, to see, 
to flash upon falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate 
into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men, — 
an awful, an evil spirit. 

Ah man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple’s library, you 
whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to swear 
to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy before the 
Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and 
reverence? For Swift’s was a reverent, was a pious spirit — for 
Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests 
of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out in the 
blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the 
maddened hurricane of his life. 

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness 
of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down 
as to put his apostasy out to hire.* The paper left behind him, 
called “ Thoughts on Keligion,” is merely a set of excuses for not 
professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached 
pamphlets : they have scarce a Christian characteristic ; they might 
be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, 
or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant — 
he is too great and too proud for that ; and, in so far as the badness 
of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, 
it poisoned him ; he was strangled in his bands. He goes through 
life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah 
in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, 
and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. 

* “ Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving 
to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. However, 
although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the 
Church merely for support .” — Anecdotes of the Family of Swifts by the Dean. 


442 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


What a night, my God, it was ! what a lonely rage and long 
agony — what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant ! * It is 
awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through 
life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can’t 
fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The 
kings can have no company. But this man suffered so ; and de- 
served so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain. 

The “ sseva indignatio ” of which he spoke as lacerating his 
heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — as if the 
wretch who lay under that stone waiting God’s judgment had a 
right to be angry — ^breaks out from him in a thousand pages of 
his writing, and tears and rends him. Against men in office, he 
having been overthrown ; against men in England, he having lost 
his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to 
rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous “ Drapier’s Letters ” 
patriotism"? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and in- 
vective ; they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition 
is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not 
that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy — the assaidt 
is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with 
a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them : one 
admires not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury 
of the champion. As is the case with madmen, certain subjects 
provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one of 
these; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it; 
rages against children ; an object of constant satire, even more 
contemptible in his eyes than a lord’s chaplain, is a poor curate 
with a large family. The idea of this luckless paternity never 
fails to bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could 
Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless moment 
of satire, have written anything like the Dean’s famous “Modest 
Proposal” for eating children"? Not one of these but melts at 
the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean has 
no such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety 
of an ogre.f “I have been assured,” says he in the “Modest 

* “Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could 
scarce soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene ; but when that 
sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine 
looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity.” — Orrery. 

t “London : April lolh, 1713. 

“Lady Masham’s eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live ; and she 
stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively 
fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the Queen, but leave every- 
thing, to stick to what is so much the interest of the public, as well as her 
own. . — Journal, 


SWIFT 


443 


Proposal,” “by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in 
London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year 
old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether 
stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ; and I make no doubt it will 
equally serve in a ragout^ And taking up this pretty joke, as 
his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and logic. He turns 
and twists this subject in a score of different ways ; he hashes it ; 
and he serves it up cold ; and he garnishes it ; and relishes it 
always. He describes the little animal as “ dropped from its dam,” 
advising that the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last 
month, so as to render it plump and fat for a good table ! “A 
child,” says his Reverence, “will make two dishes at an entertain- 
ment for friends ; and when the family dines alone, the fore or 
hind quarter will make a reasonable dish,” and so on ; and the 
subject being so delightful that he can’t leave it, he proceeds to 
recommend, in place of venison for squires’ tables, “the bodies 
of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve.” 
Amiable humourist ! laughing castigator of morals ! There was a 
process well known and practised in the Dean’s gay days ; when 
a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they 
called “ roasting ” him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. 
The Dean had a native genius for it. As the “Almanacli des 
Gourmands ” says, “ On nait rotisseur.” 

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift 
exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. In 
“ Gulliver,” the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver argu- 
ments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom. Swift 
speaks with approval of the practice of instantly removing children 
from their parents and educating them by the State ; and amongst 
his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be the very utmost 
a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, 
our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, 
and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example— God 
help him ! — which made him about the most wretched being in 
God’s world.* 

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as 
exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our author’s 
constant method through all his works of humour. Given a country 
of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of 
the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many 
stages of the calculation. Turning to the First Minister who waited 
behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the 
* “ My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an 
aching heart.”— /« May 1719. 


444 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Royal Sovereign^ the King of Brobdingnag observes how con- 
temptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a 
contemptible little creature as Gulliver. “ The Emperor of Lilliput’s 
features are strong and masculine ” (what a surprising humour there 
is in this description !) — “ The Emperor’s features,” Gidliver says, 
“are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, 
his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well 
proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller by the 
breadth of my nail than any of his Court, which alone is enough to 
strike an awe into beholders.” 

What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions ! How 
noble the satire is here ! how just and honest ! How perfect the 
image ! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines of the poet 
where the king of the pigmies is measured by the same standard. 
We have all read in Milton of the spear that was like “ the mast of 
some great ammiral ” ; but these images are surely likely to come to 
the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. He is turning 
it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests itself 
naturally to him, and comes out of his subject, as in that wonderful 
passage, when Gulliver’s box having been dropped by the eagle into 
the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship’s cabin, he 
calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the 
table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the 
veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come 
from such a country as Brobdingnag, he would have blundered so. 

But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best in that 
abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable 
country, describes his parting from his master the horse.* 

* Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful book is 
the description of the very old people in the “ Voyage to Laputa.” At Lugnag, 
Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and 
expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who must have so much 
learning and experience, his colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him. 

“He said: They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, 
after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both 
till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession : for 
otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, 
they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to four- 
score years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they 
had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, 
which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only 
opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of 
friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below 
their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. 
But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the 
vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the 


SWIFT 


445 


“ I took,” he says, “ a second leave of my master, but as I was 
going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to 
raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have 
been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are 
pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person should 
descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so 
inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some travellers 
are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But if 
these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and cour- 
teous disposition of the Houyhnhnms they would soon change their 
opinion.” 

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, the 
astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much 
he has been censured, the nature of the favour conferred, and the 
respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surely complete : it is 
truth topsy-turvy, entirely logical and absurd. 

As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, I suppose 

former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure ; and when- 
ever they see a funeral, they lament, and repine that others are gone to a 
harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They 
have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their 
youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the truth or 
: particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon 
their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those 
who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories ; these meet with more 
pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in 
others. 

“ If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is 
dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of 
the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence 
that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual 
continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of 
a wife. 

“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked 
on as dead in law ; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a 
small pittance is reserved for their support ; and the poor ones are maintained 
at the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any 
employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither 
are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even 
for the decision of meers and bounds. 

“At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no 
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or 
appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing 
or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, 
and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and 
relations. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with 
reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the begin- 


446 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


there is no person who reads but must admire ; as for the moral, I 
think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous ; and giant and 
great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. Some of this 
audience mayn’t have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I 
would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about 
to marry, and say “ Don’t.” When Gulliver first lands among the 
Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and assault 
him, and he describes himself as “almost stifled with the filth 
which fell about him.” The reader of the fourth part of “ Gulliver’s 
Travels ” is like the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo 
language : a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations 
against mankind — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense 
of manliness and shame ; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, 
raging, obscene. 

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his 
creed — the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. 
That last part of “ Gulliver ” is only a consequence of what has 

ning of a sentence to the end ; and by this defect they are deprived of the only 
entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. 

“The language of this country being always upon the flux, the Struld- 
brugs of one age do not understand those of another ; neither are they able, 
after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few 
general words) with their neighbours, the mortals ; and thus they lie under 
the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. 

“ This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can 
remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not 
above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times by some 
of my friends ; but although they were told ‘ that I was a great traveller, and 
had seen all the world,’ they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question ; 
only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance ; 
which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law, that strictly forbids it, 
because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very 
scanty allowance. 

‘ ‘ They are despised and hated by all sorts of people ; w en one of them 
is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly ; 
so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, 
has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed 
by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old 
they are, is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, 
and then consulting history ; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did 
not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old. 

“They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more 
horrible than the men ; besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they 
acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, 
which is not to be described ; and among half-a-dozen, I soon distinguished 
which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between 
them.” — Gulliver's Travels. 


SWIFT 


447 


gone before ; and the worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, 
cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the foolish pretension, 
the mock greatness, the pompous dulness, the mean aims, the base 
successes — all these were present to him ; it was with the din of 
these curses of the world, blasphemies against Heaven, shrieking in 
his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory — of which the 
meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and 
his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that 
he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better 
than his vaunted reason. What had this man done ? what secret 
remorse was rankling at his heart 'I what fever was boiling in him, 
that he should see all the world bloodshot? We view the world 
with our own eyes, each of us ; and we make from within us the 
world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine ; a 
selfish man is sceptical about friendship, as a man with no ear doesn’t 
care for music. A frightful self-consciousness it must have been, 
which looked on mankind so darkly through those keen eyes of Swift. 

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who interrupted 
Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation which left the prelate 
in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with marks of strong 
terror and agitation in his countenance, upon which the Archbishop 
said to Delany, “You have just met the most unhappy man on 
' earth ; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask 
a question.” * 

The most unhappy man on earth ; — Mise7rimus — what a 
character of him ! And at this time all the great wits of England 
had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, and 
worshipped him as a liberator, a saviour, the greatest Irish patriot 
and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver — the most famous 
statesmen and the greatest poets of his day had applauded him and 
done him homage; and at this time, writing over to Bolingbroke from 
Ireland, he says, “It is time for me to have done with the world, 
and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into 
the best, a7id Tiot die here in a rage, like a 2)oisoned I'at in a hole^ 

We have spoken about the men, and Swift’s behaviour to them ; 
and now it behoves us not to forget that there are certain other 
persons in the creation who had rather intimate relations with the 
great Dean.f Two women whom he loved and injured are known 

* This remarkable story came to Scott from an unnamed friend of Delany’s 
widow. It has been supposed to confirm the conjecture about his natural 
relationship to Stella; but, even if correctly reported, is open to any number 
of interpretations. 

f The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the 
famous Stella and Vanessa ; but she had a story of her own to tell about 


448 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


by every reader of books so familiarly that if we had seen them, or 
if they had been relatives of our own, we scarcely could have known 
them better. Who hasn’t in his mind an image of Stella ? Who 
does not love her ? Fair and tender creature : pure and aflectionate 
heart ! Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest for a 
hundred and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart 
which caused yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and 
grief — boots it to you now, that the whole world loves and deplores 
youl Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that 
did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet exntaph. 
Gentle lady, so lovely, so loving, so unhappy ! you have had count- 
less champions ; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From 
generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your 
beauty, we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright morning 
love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. 
We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of 
English story. 

And if Stella’s love and innocence are charming to contemplate, 
I will say that, in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite 
of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened 
heart — in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration 
which plunged Swift into such woeful pitfalls and quagmires of 
amorous perplexity— in spite of the verdicts of most women, I 
believe, who, as far as my experience and conversation go, generally 
take Vanessa’s part in the controversy — in spite of the tears which 
Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate 
and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure course of 
that true love from running smoothly — the brightest part of Swift’s 

the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift’s 
Life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers ! Varina must have a 
paragraph. 

She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, 
when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love-letter to 
her, beginning, “Impatience is the most inseparable quality of a lover.” 
But absence made a great difference in his feelings ; so, four years after- 
wards, the tone is changed. He writes again, a very curious letter, offering 
to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that nobody could possibly 
accept it. 

After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, “ I shall be blessed 
to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person be beautiful, 
or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the second, is 
all I ask for ! ” 

The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would be glad 
to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived long enough to see 
her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arrUre pensie of a sad 
character about the great Dean ! 


SWIFT 


449 

story, the star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift’s, 
is his love for Hester Johnson. It has been my business, pro- 
fessionally of course, to go through a deal of sentimental reading 
in my time, and to acquaint myself with love-making, as it has 
been described in various languages, and at various ages of the 
world ; and I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more 
exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written in 
what Swift calls “his little language” in his journal to Stella.* 
He writes to her night and morning often. He never sends away 
a letter to her but he begins a new one on the same day. He can’t 
bear to let go her kind little hand, as it were. He knows that she 
is thinking of him, and longing for him far away in Dublin yonder. 
He takes her letters from under his pillow and talks to them, 
familiarly, paternally, with fond epithets and pretty caresses — as 
he would to the sweet and artless creature who loved him. “ Stay,” 
he writes one morning — it is the 14th of December 1710 — “Stay, 
I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed. Let me see. 
Come and appear, little letter ! Here I am, says he, and what say 
you to Stella this morning fresh and fasting '? And can Stella read 
this writing without hurting her dear eyes ^ ” he goes on, after more 
kind prattle and fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly 
upon him then — the good angel of his life is with him and blessing 
him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, 
and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate : 
but would she have changed it ? I have heard a woman say that 
she would have taken Swift’s cruelty to have had his tenderness. 
He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He 
speaks of her after she is gone ; of her wit, of her kindness, of her 
grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are 
indescribably touching; in contemplation of her goodness his hard 
heart melts into pathos; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into 
poetry, and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the 
angel whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretch ed- 

* A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his art, 
in expounding the symbols of the “Little Language.” Usually, Stella is 
“ M.D.,” but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is included in it. Swift 
is “Presto"; also P.D.F.R. We have “ Good -night, M.D. ; Night, M.D. ; 
Little M.D. ; Stellakins ; Pretty Stella; Dear, roguish, impudent, pretty M.D.’ 
Every now and then he breaks into rhyme, as — 

‘ ‘ I wish you both a merry new year. 

Roast-beef, mince-pies, and good strong beer. 

And me a share of your good cheer. 

That I was there, as you were here. 

And you are a little saucy dear." 


7 


450 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

ness and un worthiness, and adores her with cries of remorse and 
love : — 

“ When on my sickly couch I lay, 

Impatient both of night and day, 

And groaning in unmanly strains, 

Called every power to ease my pains, 

Then Stella ran to my relief. 

With cheerful face and inward grief. 

And though by Heaven’s severe decree 
She suffers hourly more than me, 

No cruel master could require 
From slaves employed for daily hire. 

What Stella, by her friendship warmed, 

With vigour and delight performed. 

Now, with a soft and silent tread. 

Unheard she moves about my bed : 

My sinking spirits now supplies 
With cordials in her hands and eyes. 

Best pattern of true friends ! beware 
You pay too dearly for your care 
If, while your tenderness secures 
My life, it must endanger yours : 

For such a fool was never found 
Who pulled a palace to the ground, 

Only to have the ruins made 
Materials for a house decayed.” 

One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear little piece 
of injustice was performed in her favour, for which I confess, for 
my part, I can’t help thanking fate and the Dean. That other 
person was sacrificed to her — that — tha| young woman, who lived 
five doors from Doctor Swift’s lodgings in Bury Street, and who 
flattered him, and made love to him in such an outrageous manner 
— Vanessa was thrown over. 

Swift did not keep Stella’s letters to him in reply to those he 
wrote to her.* He kept Bolingbroke’s, and Pope’s, and Harley’s, 

* The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evening 
of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-28 : — 

‘ ‘ She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen ; but 
then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most 
beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London — only a little 
too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in 
perfection. 

"... Properly speaking ” — he goes on, with a calmness which, under the 
circumstances, is terrible — ‘ ‘ she has been dying six months ! . . . 

" Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more 
improved them by reading and conversation. ... All of us who had the happi- 
ness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an afternoon’s or evening’s 


SWIFT 


451 


and Peterborough’s: but Stella “very carefully,” the Lives say, 
kept Swift’s. Of course : that is the way of the world : and so we 
cannot tell what her style was, or of what sort were the little letters 
which the Doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from 
under his pillow of a morning. But in Letter IV. of that famous 
collection he describes his lodging in Bury Street, where he has the 
first-floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a week ; 
and in Letter VI. he says “ he has visited a lady just come to 
town,” whose name somehow is not mentioned ; and in Letter VIII. 
he enters a query of Stella’s — “What do you mean ‘that boards 
near me, that I dine with now and then ’ ? What the deuce ! You 
know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better 
than I do.” Of course she does. Of course Swift has not the 
slightest idea of what she means. But in a few letters more it 
turns out that the Doctor has been to dine “gravely” with a 
Mrs. Vanhomrigh : then that he has been to “his neighbour”: 
then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole 
week with his neighbour ! Stella was quite right in her previsions. 
She saw from the very first hint what was going to happen ; and 
scented Vanessa in the air.* The rival is at the Dean’s feet. 

conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing 
that was said in the company. Some of us have written down several of her 
sayings, or what the French call bans mots, wherein she excelled beyond 
belief.” 

The specimens on record, however, in the Dean’s paper, called " Bon Mots 
de Stella,” scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric. But the following 
prove her wit : — 

“ A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began 
to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by 
comforted him — that he should be easy, because ‘ the child was gone to heaven, ’ 

‘ No, my Lord,’ said she ; ‘ that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure 
never to see his child there. ’ 

“ When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ‘ Madam, you are near the 
bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again.’ She answered, 

‘ Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.’ 

“A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and 
repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. 
He was at a loss ; but she solved the difficulty by saying, ‘ The Doctor’s nails 
grew dirty by scratching himself.’ 

“ A Quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked ; it had a broad brim, and a 
label of paper about its neck, ‘What is that?’ — said she — ‘my apothecary’s 
son !’ The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us 
all a-laughing,” — Swift's Works, Scott’s ed, vol. ix. 295-96. 

* “I am so hot and lazy after my morning’s walk, that I loitered at Mrs. 
Vanhomrigh’s, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere listlessness 
dine there very often ; so I did to-day.” — Journal to Stella. 

Mrs. Vanhomrigh, “Vanessa’s” mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant 


45 ^ 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea to- 
gether, and going to prayers togetlier, and learning Latin together, 
and conjugating amo, amas, amavi together. The “ little lan- 
guage ” is over for poor Stella. By the rule of grammar and the 
course of conjugation, doesn’t amavi come after amo and amas ? 

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa ^ you may peruse in 
Cadenus’s own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa’s 
vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him ; she adores 
him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something god-like, 
and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.f As they are 
bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Doctor Swift’s 
are found pretty often in Vanessa’s parlour. He likes to be 
admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman 
of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. 
He sees her every day ; he does not tell Stella about the business ; 
until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too fond of him, until the 
Doctor is quite frightened by the young woman’s ardour, and 
confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither of them 

who held lucrative appointments in King William’s time. The family settled 
in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James’s — a street made 
notable by such residents as Swift and Steele ; and, in our own time, Moore and 
Crabbe. 

* “Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus 
is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress ; impatient to 
be admired ; very romantic in her turn of mind ; superior, in her own opinion, 
to all her sex ; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride ; not without some agreeable 
accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel ; . . , happy 
in the thoughts of being reported Swift’s concubine, but still aiming and intend- 
ing to be his wife” — Lord Orrery. 

t “You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You 
had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so 
much : or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you 
continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. It 
is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last : I am 
sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing words of 
yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more ; but those 
resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long ; for there is something in human 
nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, 
and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you’d not 
condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The 
reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you should I see you; for 
when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your 
looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh ! that you may have but so much 
regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as 
little as ever I can ; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would 
move you to forgive me ; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live.”— 
Vanessa. (M. 1714.) 


SWIFT 


453 


— that I believe was the truth ; but if he had not married Stella, 
Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself When he went 
back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, 
pursued the fugitive Dean, In vain he protested, he vowed, 
he soothed, and bullied ; the news of the Dean’s marriage 
with Stella at last came to her, and it killed her — she died of 
that passion.* 

And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written 
beautifully regarding her, “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Mrs. 
Stella, “ for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about a 
broomstick.” A woman — a true woman ! Would you have had 
one of them forgive the other 1 

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Doctor 
Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella’s hair, enclosed in a paper 
by Swift, on which are written in the Dean’s hand, the words : 
“ Only a ivoman^s hairy An instance, says Scott, of the Dean’s 
desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cynical indifference. 

See the various notions of critics ! Do those words indicate 

* “ If we consider Swift’s behaviour, so far only as it relates to women, 
we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures.” — 
Orrery. 

"You would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of 
very virtuous women, who attended him from morning till night.” — Orrery. 

A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott’s furnished him with the materials on 
which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa — after she had 
retired to cherish her passion in retreat : — 

" Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built 
much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An 
aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account) showed the grounds to my 
correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s gardener, and used to 
work with his father in the garden when a boy. He remembered the unfor- 
tunate Vanessa well ; and hi$ account of her corresponded with the usual 
description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went 
seldom abroad, and saw little company : her constant amusement was reading, 
or walking in the garden. . . . She avoided company, and was always melan- 
choly, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The 
garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said 
that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her 
own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, 
still called ‘ Vanessa’s bower.’ Three or four trees and some laurels indicate 
the spot. . . . There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the 
opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey. ... In this sequestered 
spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used 
often to sit, with books and writing-materials on the table before them.” — 
Scott’s Swift, vol. i. pp. 246-7. 

"... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found 
herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the 


454 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

indifference or an attempt to hide feeling ? Did you ever hear 
or read four words more pathetic 1 Only a woman’s hair ; only 
love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; only the ten- 
derest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed away 
now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and 
pitiless desertion : — only that lock of hair left ; and memory and 
remorse, for the guilty lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of 
his victim.* 

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. 
Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man 
have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown 
fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But it was not good 
to visit that place. People did not remain there long, and suffered 

object of her affections— to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissi- 
tude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined 
connection with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known 
to her, had, doubtless, long excited her secret jealousy, although only a single 
hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 
1713, when she writes to him — then in Ireland — ‘ If you are very happy, it is 
ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except His what is inconsistent with mine' 
Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight 
years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, 
to the weak state of her rival’s health, which, from year to year, seemed to 
announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa’s impatience pre- 
vailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, 
requesting to know the nature of that connection. Stella, in reply, informed her 
of her marriage with the Dean ; and full of the highest resentment against Swift 
for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh’s in- 
quiries implied, she sent to him her rival’s letter of interrogation, and without 
seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. 
Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury 
to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley 
Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which 
was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate 
Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit 
down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the 
house, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the 
packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant. She 
sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed yet cherished hopes 
which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of 
him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this last 
interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few 
weeks. ” — Scott. 

* Thackeray wrote to Hayward, who had said something of this lecture 
when originally delivered, and had apparently misunderstood this passage, 
that the phrase quoted seemed to him to be “the most affecting words I ever 
heard, indicating the truest love, passion, and remorse .” — Hayward Corre- 
spondence, i. 1 19. 


SWIFT 


455 


for having been there.* He shrank away from all affection sooner 
or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away from 
him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He broke from 
his fastest friend, Sheridan ; he slunk away from his fondest admirer. 
Pope. His laugh jars on one’s ear after seven score years. He 
was always alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when 
Stella’s sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, 
silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius : an 
awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that 
thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have 
other great names to mention — none I think, however, so great or 
so gloomy. , 

* “ M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. 
II n’a pas, i la v^ritd, la gait6 du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, 
le choix, le bon gofit qui manquent notre cur6 de Meudon. Ses vers sont 
d’un gofit singulier, et presque inimitable ; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage 
en vers et en prose ; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage 
dans son pays.” — Voltaire: Lettres sur les Anglais. Lettre XX. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 


GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the 



Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating 


^ ^ club, called the “ Union ” ; and I remember that there was 

a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that re- 
nowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition 
and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating 
Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some 
chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman’s 
nominee. So Jones of John’s, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise 
in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round 
the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the 
majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that 
the great nobleman’s emissary was listening to the debate from the 
back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his 
pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge 
men, orators of the “ Union,” were actually caught up thence, and 
carried down to Cornwall or Old Sarum, and so into Parliament. 
And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, 
to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary 


chariot. 


Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and 
Members of Parliament in Anne’s and George’s timel Were they 
all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch 1 
How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such 
a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of 
verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great 
personage was bemoaned, the French King assailed, the Dutch or 
Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse ; and the party in 
power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a com- 
missionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an 
Embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard’s 
possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby’s. 
What have men of letters got in our time? Think, not only of 
Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire — but Addison, 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 


457 


Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis^ and 
many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings 
out of the public purse.* The wits of whose names we shall 
treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the 
King’s coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter- 
day coming round for them. 

They all began at school or college in the regular way, pro- 
ducing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes 
upon public events, battles, sieges, Court marriages and deaths, 
in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued 
with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France 
and in England. “ Aid us, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo,” cried Addison, 
or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. “Accourez, 
chastes nymphes du Permesse,” says Boileau, celebrating the Grand 
Monarch. “ Des sons que ma lyre enfante ces arbres sont r^jouis ; 
marquez-en bien la cadence ; et vous, vents, faites silence ! je vais 
parler de Louis ! ” Schoolboys’ themes and foundation exercises are 
the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians 
are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, 
what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now 
think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to 
a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman 1 In the past century 
the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves 
at these queer compositions ; and some got fame, and some gained 


* The following is a conspectus of them : — 

Addison. — Commissioner of Appeals; Under-Secretary of State; Secretary 
to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; Keeper of the Records in 
Ireland ; Lord of Trade ; and one of the Principal Secretaries 
of State, successively. 

Steele.— Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables 
at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of 
Comedians ; Commissioner of “ Forfeited Estates in Scotland.” 

Prior. — Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber to King William ; Secretary to the Embassy in France ; 
Under-Secretary of State ; Ambassador to France. 

Tickell. — Under -Secretary of State ; Secretary to the Lords Justices of 
Ireland. 

Congreve. — Commissioner for licensing Hackney-Coaches ; Commissioner for 
Wine Licences ; place in the Pipe Office ; post in the Custom 
House ; Secretary of Jamaica. 

Gay. — Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover). 

John Dennis. — A place in the Custom House. 

“ En Angleterre . . . les lettres sont plus en honneur qu’ici.”— Voltaire : 

Lettres sur les Anglais. Lettre XX. 


458 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these 
efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses. 

William Congreve’s * Pindaric Odes are still to be found in 
“ Johnson’s Poets,” that now unfrequented poets’-corner, in which 
so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche ; but though he was also 
voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was 
Congreve’s wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly 
fortune. And it is recorded that his first play, the “ Old Bachelor,” 
brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English 
muses, Charles Montague, Lord Halifax — who, being desirous to 
place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly 
made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, 
bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe Office, and likewise 
a post in the Custom House of the value of £600.1 

A commissionership of hackney-coaches — a post in the Custom 
House — a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing a comedy ! 
Doesn’t it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe Office ? | 
“ Ah, I’heureux temps que celui de ces fables ! ” Men of letters 
there still be : but I doubt whether any Pipe Offices are left. The 
public has smoked them long ago. 

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and, 
being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in 
society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present 
will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, 
and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most 
eminent literary “ swell ” of his age. In my copy of “ Johnson’s 

* He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard, 
Congreve, Esquire, of Congreve and Stretton in' Staffordshire — a very ancient 
family. 

t The Old Bachelor was produced January 1693. Congreve was made 
Commissioner of Hackney-Coaches in 1695. 

X “Pipe. — Pi/>a, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great 
roll. 

"Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe 
makes out leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or 
Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

“Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c.” — Rees: 
Cyclopced. Art. Pipe. 

"Pipe Office. — Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept in 
a large pipe or cask. 

“‘These be at last brought into that office of her Majesty’s Exchequer, 
which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe . . . because the whole receipt is 
finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills.’ — Bacon : 
The Office of Alienations." 

[We are indebted to Richardson’s Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. 
But a modern man of letters can know little on these points — by experience.] 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 459 

Lives ” Congreve’s wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest 
air of all the laurelled worthies. “I am the great Mr. Congreve,” 
he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People 
called him the great Mr. Congreve.* From the beginning of his 
career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his 
education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, 
he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily 
bestowed no attention to the law ; but splendidly frequented the 
coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, 
the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from 
the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The 
great Mr. Dryden f declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, 
and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and 
writes of him : “ Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review 
the ‘^neis’ and compare my version with the original. I shall 


* “ It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the 
least ; nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except 
to a better. His place in the Custom House, and his office of Secretary in 
-^Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year.” — 
^ Biog. Brit. Art. Congkeve, 

t Dryden addressed his “twelfth epistle” to “My dear friend, Mr. 
Congreve,” on his comedy called the Double Dealer, in which he says : — 

y/ ^ “ Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please ; 

^ Yet, doubling Fletcher’s force, he wants his ease. 

- In differing talents both adorned their age ; 

One for the study, t’other for the stage. 

But both to Congreve justly shall submit. 

One match’d in judgment, both o’ermatched in wit. 

In him all beauties of this age we see,” &c. &c. 






The Double Dealer, however, was not so palpable a hit as the Old Bachelor, 
but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our 
“Swell” applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the “Epistle 
Dedicatory” to the “ Right Honourable Charles Montague.” 

“ I was conscious,” said he, “ where a true critic might have put me upon 
my defence. I was prepared for the attack . . . but I have not heard anything 
said sufficient to provoke an answer.” 

He goes on — 

‘ ‘ But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false 
criticisms that are made upon me ; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. 
I am heartily sorry for it ; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics 
in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have repre- 
sented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it ? It is the busi- 
ness of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. ... I should 
be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who 
are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled 
by a surgeon when he is letting their blood." 


I 


460 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed 
me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct.” 

The “ excellent young man ” was but three or four and twenty 
when the great Dryden thus spoke of him : the greatest literary 
chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the 
marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits who 
daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Will’s. Pope 
dedicated his “ Iliad ” to him ; * * * § Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknow- 
ledge Congreve’s rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire 
went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives of Litera- 
ture ; and the man who scarce praises any other living person — 
who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison — the 
Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,! was hat in hand to Mr. 
Congreve ; and said that when he retired from the stage. Comedy 
went with him. 

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the 
drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses ; as much beloved in 
the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted 
the beautiful Bracegirdle, J the heroine of all his plays, the favourite 
of all the town of her day ; and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marl- 
borough’s daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he 
died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,§ and a large wax 
doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve’s gouty 

* “ Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me 
leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable 
men as well as finest writers of my age and country — one who has tried, and 
knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to 
Homer — and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of 
my labours. I'o him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, 
I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing 
together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of — A. Pope. 
Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer, March 25, 1720. 

f “When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he had 
much rather be fiattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for 
our author, and generously took him under his protection in his high authori- 
tative manner.” — Thos. Davies*. Dramatic Miscellanies. 

J “ Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived 
in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the 
young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess 
showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di used afterwards to wear) that 
cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left 
her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. 
Bracegirdle.” — Dr. Young. Spence s Anecdotes. 

§ “ A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow 
to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it.” — 'Pros. 
Davies : Dra^natic Miscellanies. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 461 

feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by 
his Pipe office, and his Custom House office, and his Hackney-Coach 
office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle,* who wanted it, but to 
the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn’t,! 

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic 
Muse who won him such a reputation 1 Nell Gwynn’s servant 
fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad name ; 
and in like manner, and with pretty little epithets, Jeremy Collier 
attacked that godless reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his 
time, and called her what Nell Gwynn’s man’s fellow-servants 
called Nell Gwynn’s man’s mistress. The servants of the theatre, 
Dryden, Congreve,! and others, defended themselves with the same 
success, and for the same cause which set Nell’s lacquey fighting. 
She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, 
that Comic Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles 
(who chose many more of his female friends there) at the Restora- 
tion — a wild dishevelled Lais, with eyes bright with wit and wine — 
a saucy Court-favourite that sat at the King’s knees, and laughed 
in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot- 
window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of the 
land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, 
that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell : she was gay and 

* The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was £200, as is said in the 
D 7 'a 7 natic MiscellaTties of Tom Davies ; where are some particulars about this 
charming actress and beautiful woman, . 

She had a “lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and 
“such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired 
everybody with desire." “ Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of 
them her lovers." 

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. ‘ ‘ In 
Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla . . . ; Congreve 
insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in Love for Love ; in 
his Osmyn to her Almena, in the MouvTiiTig Bride ; and, lastly, in his Mirabel 
to her Millamant, in the Way of the World. Mirabel, the fine gentleman 
of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve.” — 
DraTTiatic MiscellaTiies , vol. iii. 1784. 

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public 
favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age, 

f Johnson calls his legacy the “ accumulation of attentive parsimony, which,” 
he continues, “ though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have 
given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that 
time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress." — 
Lives of the Poets. 

J He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called Ai 7 te 7 idme 7 its of Mr. CollieBs 
False and Pnperfect Citations, &c. A specimen or two are subjoined : — 

“The greater part of these examples which he has produced are only 


462 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be : and the 
men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and 
drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight 
and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty 
certain her servants knew it. 

There is life and death going on in everything : truth and lies 
always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. 
Doubt is always crying Psha ! and sneering. A man in life, a 
humourist, in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the 
other, and laughs 'with the reverence for right and the love of truth 
in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn’t I tell 
you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin? I have 
read two or three of Congreve’s plays over before speaking of him ; 
and my feelings were rather like those, which I dare say most of us 
here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust’s house and the relics of 
an orgy ; a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper- table, the breast 
of a dancing-girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a 
jester : a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his 
moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve 
Muse is dead, and her song choked in Time’s ashes. We gaze at 
the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad 
veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, 
the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl 
once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears 
that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets ; 
and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that 
once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. They used to call 
those teeth pearls once. See, there’s the cup she drank from, the 
gold-chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her 
cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead 
of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones ! 

demonstrations of his own impurity ; they only savour of his utterance, and 
were sweet enough till tainted by his breath. 

“ Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine significa- 
tion, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit ; he possesses the innocent 
phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies. 

“ If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am 
not very well versed in his nomenclatures. ... I will only call him Mr. Collier, 
and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it. 

“ The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic." 

“ Congreve," says Doctor Johnson, “ a very young man, elated with success, 
and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. . . , The 
dispute was protracted through ten years ; but at last comedy grew more 
modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of 
the theatre.” — Life of Congreve. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 463 

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and look- 
ing at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the 
grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, and retreating, the cavalier seul 
advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and men twirling round 
at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the 
quaint rite is -celebrated. Without the music we can’t understand 
that comic dance of the last century — its strange gravity and gaiety, 
its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite 
unlike life ; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I’m 
afraid it’s a Heathen mystery, symbolising a Pagan doctrine ; pro- 
testing — as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their 
theatre and laughing at their games; as Sallust and his friends, 
and their mistresses protested, crowned with flowers, with cups in 
their hands — against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine 
whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of 
the Mediterranean, w’ere for breaking the fair images of Venus and 
flinging the altars of Bacchus down. 

I fancy poor Congreve’s theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, 
and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the 
theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons 
have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. 
When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the 
dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife : in the ballad, 
when the poet bids his mistress to gather roses while she may, and 
warns her that old Time is still a-flying : in the ballet, when honest 
Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, 
and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who 
is opportunely asleep ; and when seduced by the invitations of the 
rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on 
each other’s tiptoes that pas which you all know, and which is only 
interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the paste- 
board chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the 
young people get an encore) : when Harlequin, splendid in youth, 
strength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs 
over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered 
giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down : when Mr. 
Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with 
odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his 
wife about the head, and hangs the hangman, — don’t you see in the 
comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch’s 
puppet-show — the Pagan protest % Doesn’t it seem as if Life puts 
in its plea and sings its comment ? Look how the lovers walk and 
hold each other’s hands and whisper ! Sings the chorus — “ There is 
nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like 


464 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


beauty of your springtime. Look ! how old age tries to meddle 
with merry sport ! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled 
old dotard ! There is nothing like youth, there is nothing like 
beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valour win 
beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. 
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy ! Would you know the Segreto per esser 
felice ? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian.” 
As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song— hark ! what is that 
chaunt coming nearer and nearer 1 What is that dirge which will 
disturb us % The lights of the festival burn dim — the cheeks turn 
pale — the voice quavers — and the cup drops on the floor. Who’s 
there % Death and Fate are at the gate, and they will come in. 

Congreve’s comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, 
emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest 
jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets 
and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses — perhaps the very 
worst company in the world. There doesn’t seem to be a pretence 
of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour 
(dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators 
of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to 
conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose 
long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, 
they are always splendid and triumphant — overcome all dangers, 
vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, 
husbands, usurers, are the foes these champions contend with. 
They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the 
part in the dramas which the wicked enchanter or the great blunder- 
ing giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles 
and resists — a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the knight. 
It is an old man with a money-box : Sir Belmour his son or nephew 
spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man with a 
young wife whom he locks up : Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, 
trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunks. The old 
fool, what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blush- 
ing eighteen? Money is for youth, love is for youth, away with 
the old people. When Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced 
the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt’s grand- 
daughter out of the nursery — it will be his turn ; and young Belmour 
will make a fooi of him. All this pretty morality you have in the 
comedies of William Congreve, Esquire. They are full of wit. 
Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour ; but 
ah ! it’s a weary feast, that banquet of wit where no love is. It 
palls very soon ; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank head- 
aches in the morning. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 


465 


I can’t pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve’s 
plays * — which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring — any more 
than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and 
a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate ; but 
some of his verses — they were amongst the most famous lyrics of 

* The scene of Valentine’s pretended madness in Love for Love is a 
splendid specimen of Congreve’s daring manner ; — 

"Scandal. And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon 
him? 

" Je7-enty. Yes, sir ; he says he’ll favour it, and mistake her for Angelica. 

“ Scandal. It may make us sport. 

“ Foresight. Mercy on us ! 

“ Valentine. Husht — interrupt me not — I’ll whisper predictions to thee, 
and thou shalt prophesie ; — I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick, 
— I have told thee what’s passed — now I’ll tell what’s to come ; — Dost thou 
know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not— for I will tell thee. 
To-morrow knaves will thrive thro’ craft, and fools thro’ fortune ; and honesty 
will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning 
to-morrow. 

"Scandal. Ask him, Mr. Foresight. 

‘ ‘ Foresight. Pray what will be done at Court ? 

" Valentine. Scandal will tell you ; — I am truth, I never come there. 

‘ ‘ Foresight. In the city ? 

“ Valentine. Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. 
Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters as if religion were to be 
sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks 
will strike twelve at noon, and the horn’d herd buzz in the Exchange at 
two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure 
separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and 
stratagem. And the cropt ’prentice that sweeps his master’s shop in the 
morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two- 
things, that you will see very strange ; which are, wanton wives with their 
legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, 
I must examine you before I go further ; you look suspiciously. Are you a 
husband ? 

‘ ‘ Foresight. I am married. 

“ Valentine. Poor creature ! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish ? 

"Foresight. No; St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. 

‘ ‘ Valentine. Alas, poor man ! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled ; 
his legs dwindled, and his back bow’d. Pray, pray for a metamorphosis — 
change thy shape, and shake off age ; get thee Medea's kettle and be boiled 
anew; come forth with lab’ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' 
shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make 
thee pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, 
ha ! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the 
pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet ! Ha, ha, ha ! 

“ Foresight. His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal. 

" Scandal. I believe it is a spring-tide. 

"Foresight. Very likely— truly ; you understand these matters. Mr, 


466 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


the time, and pronounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries — 
may give an idea of his power, of his grace, of his daring manner, 
his magnificence in compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He 

Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has 
uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical. 

" Valentine. Oh ! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long? 

''Jeremy. She’s here, sir. 

" Mrs Foresight. Now, sister ! 

' ‘ Mrs. Frail. O Lord ! what must I say ? 

"Scandal. Humour him, madam, by all means. 

"Valentine. Where is she? Oh! I see her: she comes, like Riches, 
Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. 
Oh — welcome, welcome I 

"Mrs. Frail. How d’ye, sir? Can I serve you? 

“ Valentine. Hark’ee — I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the 
moon shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we’ll be married in the dead of 
night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, 
that it may be secret ; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he 
may fold his ogling tail; and Argus’s hundred eyes be shut — ha! Nobody 
shall know, but Jeremy. 

"Mrs Frail. No, no ; we’ll keep it secret ; it shall be done presently. 

" Valentine. The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither — closer — that 
none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news : Angelica is turned nun, 
and I am turning friar, and yet we’ll marry one another in spite of the Pope. 
Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part ; for she’ll meet me two 
hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won’t 
see one another’s faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then 
we’ll blush once for all. ... 

‘ ' Enter Tattle. 

" Tattle. Do you know me, Valentine f 

“ Valentine. You ! — who are you? No, I hope not. 

“ Tattle. I am Jack Tattle, your friend. 

“ Valentine. My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou 
canst not lye with my wife ; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow 
money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend? 

“ Tattle. Hah ! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret. 

" Angelica. Do you know me, Valentine ? 

" Valentine. Oh, very well. 

" Angelica. Who am I ? 

Valentine. You’re a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it 
grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond ; and he 
that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white — a sheet of spotless paper — when 
you first are born ; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose’s 
quill. I know you ; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found 
out a strange thing ; I found out what a woman was good for. 

“ Tattle. Ay ! pr’ythee, what’s that? 

“ Valentine. Why, to keep a secret. 

“ Tattle. O Lord ! 

“ Valentine. Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret ; for, though she should 
tell, yet she is not to be believed. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 467 

writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor 
opinion of his victims. Nothing’s new except their faces, says he : 
“ every woman is the same.” He says this in his first comedy. 

Tattle. Hah ! Good again, faith. 

“ Valentine. I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like.”— 
Congreve : Love for Love. 

There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve’s comedy of The 
Double Dealer, in whose character the author introduces some wonderful 
traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and 
no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could 
resist Congreve. 

"Lady Ply ant. Oh! reflect upon the horror of your conduct! Offering 
to pervert me” [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her 
daughter’s hand, not for her own] — “ perverting me from the road of virtue, 
in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip — not one faux pas. 
Oh, consider it ; what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke 
me to frailty ! Alas ! humanity is feeble. Heaven knows ! Very feeble, and 
inable to support itself. 

" Mellefont. Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam 

‘ ‘ Lady Ply ant. O Lord, ask me the question ! I swear I’ll deny it — 
therefore don’t ask me ; nay, you shan’t ask me, I swear I’ll deny it. O 
Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face ; I warrant I am as red 
as a turkey-cock. O fie, cousin Mellefont ! 

“ Mellefont. Nay, madam, hear me; I mean 

"Lady Plyant. Hear you? No, no; I’ll deny you first, and hear you 
afterwards. For one does not know how one’s mind may change upon hearing 
— hearing is one of the senses and all the senses are fallible. I won’t trust 
my honour, I assure you ; my honour is infallible and pncomatable. 

"Mellefont. For Heaven’s sake, madam 

"Lady Plyant. Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of 
Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don’t 
think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don’t think it a sin ; but still, 

my honour, if it were no sin But, then, to marry my daughter for the 

convenience of frequent opportunities — I’ll never consent to that : as sure as 
can be. I’ll break the match. 

“ Mellefont. Death and amazement ! Madam, upon my knees 

"Lady Plyant. Nay, nay, rise up! come, you shall see my good-nature. 
I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. ’Tis not your fault ; 
nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms ? And how 
can you help it, if you are made a captive ? I swear it is pity it should be 
a fault ; but, my honour. Well, but your honour, too— but the sin ! Well, but 
the necessity. O Lord, here’s somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you 
must consider of your crime ; and strive as much as can be against it — strive, be 
sure ; but don’t be melancholick — don’t despair ; but never think that I’ll grant 
you anything. O Lord, no ; but be sure you lay aside all thoughts of the 
marriage, for though I know you don’t love Cynthia, only as a blind to your 
passion for me — yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous ! 
No, no, I can’t be jealous ; for I must not love you. Therefore don’t hope ; but 
don’t despair neither. Oh, they’re coming; I must fly.” — The Double Dealer, 
act ii. sc. V. page 156. 


468 E'NGLISH HUMOURISTS 

which he wrote languidly * in illness, when he was an “ excellent 
young man.” Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more 
excellent thing. 

When he advances to make one of his conquests, it is with a 
splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like 
Grammont’s French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida. 

“Cease, cease to ask her name,” he writes of a young lady 
at the Wells of Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent 
compliment — 

“ Cease, cease to ask her name, 

The crowned Muse’s noblest theme, 

Whose glory by immortal fame 
Shall only sounded be. 

But if you long to know. 

Then look round yonder dazzling row : 

Who most does like an angel show, 

You may be sure ’tis she." 

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well 
pleased at the poet’s manner of celebrating her — 

“ When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, 

With eyes so bright and with that awful air, 

I thought my heart which durst so high aspire 
As bold as his who snatched celestial fire. 

But soon as e’er the beauteous idiot spoke. 

Forth from her coral lips such folly broke : 

Like balm the trickling nonsense heal’d my wound. 

And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound.” 

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet 
does not seem to respect one much more than the other ; and 
describes both with exquisite satirical humour — 

“ Fair Amoret is gone astray ; 

Pursue and seek her, every lover. 

I’ll tell the signs by which you may 
The wandering shepherdess discover. 

Coquet and coy at once her air, 

Both studied, though both seem neglected ; 

Careless she is with artful care, 

Affecting to seem unaffected. 


* “ There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have 
done everything by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the 
languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborate- 
ness of dialogue and incessant ambition of wit.” — Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 469 

With skill her eyes dart every glance, 

Yet change so soon you’d ne’er suspect them ; 

For she’d persuade they wound by chance, 

Though certain aim and art direct them. 

She likes herself, yet others hates, 

For that which in herself she prizes ; 

And, while she laughs at them, forgets 
She is the thing that she despises. ” 

; What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule 
upon her 1 Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. Congreve ? 
I Could anybody 1 Could Sabina, when she woke and heard such a 
i bard singing under her window 1 “ See,” he writes — 

' “ See ! see, she wakes — Sabina wakes ! 

And now the sun begins to rise. 

Less glorious is the morn, that breaks 

From his bright beams, than her fair eyes, 
j With light united, day they give ; 

I But different fates ere night fulfil : 

! How many by his warmth will live ! 

How many will her coldness kill ! ” 

Are you melted Don’t you think him a divine man ? If not 
touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda : — 

‘ ‘ Pious Selinda goes to prayers. 

If I but ask the favour ; 

And yet the tender fool’s in tears. 

When she believes I’ll leave her : 

Would I were free from this restraint, 

Or else had hopes to win her : 

Would she could make of me a saint, 

Or I of her a sinner ! ” 

What a conquering air there is about these ! What an irre- 
sistible Mr. Congreve it is ! Sinner ! of course he will be a sinner, 
the delightful rascal ! Win her ! of course he will win her, the 
victorious rogue ! He knows he will : he must — with such a grace, 
with such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered suit. You 
see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair 
jewelled liand through his dishevelled periwig, and delivering a 
killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina ? What a 
comparison that is between the nymph and the sun ! The sun 
gives Sabina the pas, and does not venture to rise before her lady- 
ship : the morn’s bright beams are less glorious than her fair eyes ; 
but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances : everybody 
but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless. Louis Quatorze in all 


470 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

liis glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the 
Mall and Spring Gardens.* 

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter 
rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps 
the great Congreve was not far wrong, f A touch of Steele’s tender- 
ness is worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift’s lightning, a beam of 
Addison’s pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. 
But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow. | 
We have seen in Swift a humourous philosopher, whose truth 
frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have 
had in Congreve a humourous observer of another school, to whom 

* “Among those by whom it (‘Will’s’) was frequented, Southerne and 
Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden’s friendship. . . . But 
Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden’s 
friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated Old 
Bachelor, being put into the poet’s hands to be revised. Dryden, after making 
a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high 
and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen." — 
Scott’s Dryden, vol. i. p. 370. 

t It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire 
visited him, in the decline of his life. 

The anecdote relating to his saying that he wished “to be visited on no 
other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity,’’ 
is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the 
English version of Voltaire’s Letters concerning the English Nation, published 
in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith’s Memoir of Voltaire. But it is worthy 
of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition 
of Voltaire’s CEuvres Completes in the “Pantheon Litt^raire.” Vol. v. of his 
works. (Paris, 1837.) 

“ Celui de tons les Anglais qui a port6 le plus loin la gloire du theatre 
comique est feu M. Congreve. II n’a fait que peu de pieces, mais toutes sont 
excellentes dans leur genre. . . . Vous y voyez partout le langage des honn^tes 
gens avec des actions de fripon ; ce qui prouve qu’il connaissait bien son monde, 
et qu’il vivait dans ce qu’on appelle la bonne compagnie.’’— Voltaire : Lettres 
sur les Anglais. Lettre XIX. 

X On the death of Queen Mary he published a Pastoral— Mourning 
Muse of Alexis. Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. 
The Queen is called Pastora. 

“ I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn. 

And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,’’ 

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that — 

“ With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound. 

And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground’’— 

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period). ... It 
continues — 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 471 

the world seems to have no morals at all, and whose ghastly 
doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when 

“ Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, 

Stretch’d on the ground and close to earth his face 
Scalding with tears the already faded grass. 

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come? 

And must Pastora moulder in the tomb ? 

Ah Death ! more fierce and unrelenting far 
Than wildest wolves or savage tigers are ! 

With lambs and sheep their hungers are appeased, 

But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized.” 

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess — 
that figure of the “Great Shepherd” lying speechless on his stomach, in a 
state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit — are to be 
remembered in poetry surely ; and this style was admired in its time by the 
admirers of the great Congreve ! 

In the Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas (the young Lord Blandford, the 
great Duke of Marlborough’s only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess ! 

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into 
work here again. At the sight of her grief— 

“ Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego. 

And dumb distress and new compassion show, 

Nature herself attentive silence kept. 

And motion seemed suspended while she wept !" 

And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines — and Dryden wrote 
to him in his great hand : — 

“ Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought. 

But Genius must be born and never can be taught. 

This is your portion, this your native store ; 

Heaven, that but once was prodigal before. 

To Shakspeare gave as much, she could not give him more. 

Maintain your Post : that’s all the fame you need. 

For ’tis impossible you should proceed ; 

Already I am worn with cares and age. 

And just abandoning th’ ungrateful stage : 

Unprofitably kept at Heaven’s expence, 

I live a Rent-charge upon Providence : 

But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn. 

Whom I foresee to better fortune born. 

Be kind to my remains, and oh ! defend 
Against your Judgment your departed Friend ! 

Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue ; 

But shade those Lawrels which descend to You : 

And take for Tribute what these Lines express ; 

You merit more, nor could my Love do less.” 

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shad- 
well, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen 


472 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time 
comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different 
heart and spirit — a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good 
and happy ; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever 
had ; and I believe you have divined already that I am about to 
mention Addison’s honoured name. 

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we 
have of him, amongst which the famous article in the Edinburgh 
Review * may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer 
and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous 
skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own : 
looking at that calm fair face, and clear countenance — those chiselled 
features pure and cold, I can’t but fancy that this great man — in 
this respect, like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture — was 
also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few 
equals, and they don’t herd with those. It is in the nature of 
such lords of intellect to be solitary — they are in the world, but 
not of it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under 
them. 

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond easy 
endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his 
family, and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, 
calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he 
met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much ? I may 

meet they fall into each other’s arms, with “Jack, Jack, I must buss thee;” 
or, “Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad.” And in a similar manner 
the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentleman do not kiss now ; I 
wonder if they love each other better? 

Steele calls Congreve “Great Sir” and “Great Author”; says “Well- 
dressed barbarians knew his awful name,” and addresses him as if he were a 
prince ; and speaks of Pasiora as one of the most famous tragic compositions, 

* “To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affec- 
tion as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a 
hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. . . . After full inquiry and 
impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much 
love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race.” 
— Macaulay. 

' ‘ Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable 
to believe that Addison’s profession and practice were at no great variance ; 
since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, 
though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formid- 
able, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his 
enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not 
only the esteem but the kindness ; and of others, whom the violence of oppo- 
sition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the 
reverence. "—Johnson. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 473 

expect a child to admire me for being taller or writing more cleverly 
than she; but how can I ask my superior to say that I am a 
wonder when he knows better than I '? In Addison’s days you 
could scarcely show him a literary performance, a sermon, or a 
poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could do better. 
His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn’t praise, be- 
cause he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common 
people have.* How was he who was so tall to look up to any but 
the loftiest genius ? He must have stooped to put himself on a 
level with most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles 
with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every 
literary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his 
court and went away charmed from the great king’s audience, and 
cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty 
had paid him — each of the two good-natured potentates of letters 
brought their star and riband into discredit. Everybody had his 
majesty’s orders. Everybody had his majesty’s cheap portrait, on 
a box surrounded by diamonds worth twopence apiece. A very 
great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, 
but give his idea of the truth. Addison praises the ingenious 
Mr. Pinkethman : Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Doggett, the 
actor, whose benefit is coming off that night : Addison praises Don 
Saltero : Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee 
and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius, f But between 
those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don’t think 
the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope,^the Papist, much; I 
don’t think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison’s men abused 

* “Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something 
more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man ; but 
with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to 
preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence.” — Pope. Spence's 
A necdotes. 

f “Milton’s chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence, lies in 
the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the moderns, who rival 
him in every other part of poetry ; but in the greatness of his sentiments he 
triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient, Homer only excepted. 
It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend itself with greater ideas 
than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books.” 
— Spectator, No. 279. 

“ If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of 
working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one.” — Ibid. 
No. 417. 

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday’s Spectator, from January 
19th to May 3rd, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may place those he 
did to Sacred Music. 


474 ENGLISH HUMOUKISTS 

Mr. Pope, I don’t think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to 
contradict them.* 

Addison’s father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, 
and rose in the Church, f His famous son never lost his clerical 
training and scholastic gravity, and was called “ a parson in a tye- 
wig”| in London afterwards at a time when tie-wigs were only worn 
by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it decent 
to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salis- 
bury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old, 
he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, where he speedily began to dis- 
tinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and 
fanciful poem of “The Pigmies and the Cranes,” is still read by 
lovers of that sort of exercise ; and verses are extant in honour of 
King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth’s 
custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyseus : many 
more works are in the Collection, including one on the Peace of 
Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a 
pension of £300 a year, on which Addison set out on his travels. 

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued 
himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at 


* " Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards.” 
— Pope. Spence s Anecdotes. 

“ ‘ Leave him as soon as you can,’ said Addison to me, speaking of Pope ; 
‘ he will certainly play you some devilish trick else : he has an appetite to 
satire.’ ’’—Lady Wortley Montagu. Spence's Anecdotes. 

t Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, 
a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon 
of Coventry. 

+ “ The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his 
company, declared that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig,’ can detract little from 
his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to 
uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville.”— Johnson ; Lives 
of the Poets. (Mandeville was the author of the famous Fable of the Bees.) 

“Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison : he had a quarrel with him, 
and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him— 
‘ One day or other you’ll see that man a bishop— I’m sure he looks that way ; 
and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.’”— Pope. Spence's 
Anecdotes. 

“Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as 
between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between 
eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. Tie was untalkative whilst here, 
and often thoughtful : sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his 
room and stayed five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He 
had his masters generally at supper with him ; kept very little company be- 
sides ; and had no amour that I know of ; and I think I should have known it 
if he had had any.”— Abb#. Philippeaux of Blois. Spence's Anecdotes. 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 


475 


his fingers’ ends when he travelled in Italy."^ His patron went out 
of office, and his pension was unpaid : and hearing that this great 
scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe (the great 
Boileau,t upon perusal of Mr. Addison’s elegant hexameters, was 
first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous 
nation) — hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, pro- 
posed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on tlie grand 
tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to 
accompany his son. Lord Hertford. 

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace, and his 
Lordship his Grace’s son, and expressed himself ready to set forth. 

His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the 
most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his gracious 
intention to allow my Lord Hertford’s tutor one hundred guineas 
per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back that his services were his 
Grace’s, but he by no means found his account in the recompense 
for them. The negotiation was broken off. They parted with a 
profusion of congees on one side and the other. | 

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best 
society of Europe. How could he do otherwise ? He must have 
been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw : at all 
moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.§ He 
could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have 
omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not have committed 
many faults for which he need blush or turn pale. When warmed 
into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful 
that the greatest wits sat rapt and charmed to listen to him. No 
man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerful- 
ness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life, when he 
had lost his Government pension and given up his college chances, 

* “ His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to 
Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and 'proiound..''— Macaulay. 

f “Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first 
conceived an opinion of the Knglish genius for poetry, by perusing the present 
he made him of the Musa AnglicancB." Tickell : Preface to Addisons 
Works. 

J This proposal was made to Addison when he was in Holland on the 
retiirn from his travels. He was recommended to the Duke by the bookseller, 
Tonson, for whom he had undertaken a translation of Herodotus. He had as 
yet published nothing separately, though he was well known in Oxford, and to 
some of the Whig nobility. 

§ “ It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted 
with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew 
anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.”— Lady Wortley Montagu. 
Spences Anecdotes. 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


476 

are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy : and they 
are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last 
and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own 
and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good 
Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with countless 
gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written 
when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after 
libations to purple Lyseus over-night. He was fond of drinking the 
healths of his friends : he writes to Wyche,* of Hamburg, gratefully 
remembering Wyche’s “hoc.” “I have been drinking your health 
to-day with Sir Richard Shirley,” he writes to Bathurst. “ I have 
lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, 
where we have drunk Mr. Wood’s health a hundred times in excel- 
lent champagne,” he writes again. Swift t describes him over his 
cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. 
Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to 
warm his blood. If he was a parson, he wore a tie-wig, recollect. 
A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph 
Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine — why, we 


* Mr. Addison to Mr. Wyche. 

“ Dear Sir, — My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, 
so the properest use I can put it to is to thank y® honest gentleman that set it 
a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack 
you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a 
rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for y® present, you are not 
yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at crambo. I am sure, in 
whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express y® deep 
sense I have of y® many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell 
you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my 
travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I 
dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was 
there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has 
given us all y® satisfaction that we have found in our journey through West- 
phalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be 
as long-lived as Methuselah, or, to use a more familiar instance, as y® oldest 
hoc in y® cellar. I hope y® two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us 
are by this time come to their shapes again. I can’t forbear troubling you 
with my hearty respects to y® owners of them, and desiring you to believe me 
always, “ Dear Sir, 

“ Yours,” &c. 

“ To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty’s Resident at 
“ Hambourg, May 1703.” 

— From the Life of Addison, by Miss Aikin. Vol. i. p. 146. 

+ It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison 
was, on the whole, satisfactory from first to last. The value of Swift’s testi- 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 477 

could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have 
liked him as we do.* 

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, 
and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book 
of “ Travels ’’ had failed : his “ Dialogues on Medals ” f had had no 
particular success : his Latin verses, even though reported the best 
since Virgil, or Statius at any rate, had not brought him a Govern- 
ment place, and Addison was living up three shabby pair of stairs 
in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson 
rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary from 
Government and Fortune came and found him.j A poem was 
wanted about the Duke of Marlborough’s victory of Blenheim. 
Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord 

mony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can 
be doubted by nobody. 

Sept. lo, 1710. — I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. 

“ II. — Mr. Addison and 1 dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him 
part of this evening. 

“ i8. — To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison’s retirement near 
Chelsea. ... I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. 

“27. — To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland’s, with Steele and 
Addison, too. 

“29. — 1 dined with Mr, Addison,” &c. — Journal to Stella. 

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels “To Dr. Jonathan 
Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest 
genius of his age.” — (Scott, From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.) 

“Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; 
and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in 
his notions of persons and things,” — Letters. 

“1 examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you 
now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have 
nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself." — Swift to Addison 
(1717). Scott’s Swift. Vol. xix. p. 274. 

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. 
Time renewed them : and Tickell enjoyed Swift’s friendship as a legacy from 
the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected. 

* “ Addison usually studied all the morning ; then met his party at 
Button’s ; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into 
the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for 
me : it hurt my health, and so 1 quitted it.” — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

t The Dialogues on Medals only appeared posthumously. The Travels 
appeared in 1705, i.e. after the Campaign. It is announced in the Diverting 
Post of December 2-9, 1704, that Mr. Addison’s “ long-expected poem ” on the 
Campaign is to be published “ next week.” 

X " When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance , 
which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found 
his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for 
the cultivation of his mind.” — Johnson ; Lives of the Poets. 


478 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphiii, 
that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain 
stage, it was carried to Godolphin ; and the last lines which he 
read were these ; — 

“ But, 0 my Muse ! what numbers wilt thou find 
To sing the furious troops in battle join’d ? 

Methinks I hear the drum’s tumultuous sound 
The victor’s shouts and dying groans confound ; 

The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, 

And all the thunder of the battle rise. 

’Twas then great Marlborough’s mighty soul was proved. 

That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 

Amidst confusion, horror, and despair. 

Examined all the dreadful scenes of war : 

In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed. 

To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid. 

Inspired repulsed battalions to engage. 

And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 

So when an angel, by divine command, 

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land 
(Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed). 

Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 

And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform, 

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.” 

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pronounced 
to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that 
good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place 
of Commissioner of Appeals — vice Mr. Locke providentially pro- 
moted. In the following year Mr. Addison went to Hanover with 
Lord Halifax, and the year after was made Under-Secretary of 
State. 0 angel visits ! you come “ few and far between ” to literary 
gentlemen’s lodgings ! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor 
windows now ! * 

* [The famous story in the text, which has been generally accepted, is 
probably inaccurate. It was first told in 1732 by Addison’s cousin, Eustace 
Budgell, then ruined and half sane, who was trying to puff himself by professing 
familiar knowledge of his eminent relation. The circumstantiality of the story 
is suspicious ; Godolphin was the last man to give preferment to a poet in the 
way described, and Addison was not in the position implied. He had strong 
claims upon Halifax, his original patron. When Halifax lost office, Addison’s 
pension had ceased. Halifax was now being courted by Godolphin, and could 
make an effective application on behalf of his client. This and not the simile of 
the angel, was probably at the bottom of Addison’s preferment. It has lately 
appeared, from the publication of Hearne’s diaries by the Oxford Historical 
Society, that, in December 1705, it was reported that Addison was to marry the 
Countess of Warwick. The marriage was delayed for eleven years ; but it is 
clear that Addison had powerful friends at this time.] 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 479 

You laugh 1 You think it is in the power of few writers nowa- 
days to call up such an angel ? W ell, perhaps not ; hut permit us 
to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are in the poem of 
the “ Campaign ” some as bad lines as heart can desire ; and to 
hint that Mr. Addison did very wisely in not going further with 
my Lord Godolphin than that angelical simile. Do allow me, just 
for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of the lines which 
follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of 
the Romans after the battle : — 

“ Austria’s young monarch, whose imperial sway 
Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey, 

Whose boasted ancestry so high extends 
That in the Pagan Gods his lineage ends, 

Comes from afar, in gratitude to own 
The great supporter of his father’s throne. 

What tides of glory to his bosom ran 
Clasped in th’ embraces of the godlike man ! 

How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt, 

To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt ! 

Such easy greatness, such a graceful port, 

So turned and finished for the camp or court ! ” 

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison’s school of Char- 
terhouse could write as well as that now ? The “ Campaign ” 
has blunders, triumphant as it was; and weak points like all 
campaigns.* 

In the year 1713 “ Cato” came out. Swift has left a descrip- 
tion of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe 
were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.t 

* " Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and 
scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends ; and, 
would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed 
to be too diffident of himself ; and too much concerned about his character as a 
poet ; or (as he worded it) too solicitous for that kind of praise which, God 
knows, is but a very little matter after all ! ” — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

f “ As to poetical affairs,” says Pope in 1713, “ I am content at present to 
be a bare looker-on. . . . Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his 
days, as he is of Britain in ours ; and though all the foolish industry possible 
has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said 
of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this 
occasion : — 

" ‘ Envy itself is dumb — in wonder lost ; 

And factions strive who shall applaud him most.’ 

“ The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the 
theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other ; while the author sweated 
behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the 


480 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, compli- 
mentary garlands from literary ;nen, translations in all languages, 
delight and homage from all — save from John Dennis in a minority 
of one. Mr. Addison vras called the “great Mr. Addison” after 
this. The Colfee-house Senate saluted him Divus : it was heresy 
to question tliat decree. 

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in 
the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was 
appointed Secretary of State in 1 71 7. And letters of his are 

extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young | 
Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as “ my dearest Lord,” 
and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily 
about nightingales and birds’-nests, which he has found at Fulham [i 
for his Lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in 
the ear of Lord Warwick’s mamma. Addison married her Ladyship 
in 1716 ; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid 
but dismal union.* 

hand than the head. ... I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses 
of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, 
into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he 
expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual 
dictator.”— Pope’s Letters to Sir W. Trumbull. 

Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, 
and Garth the Epilogue. 

It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual 
quotations ; e.g , — 

”... big with the fate 
Of Cato and of Rome.” 

“ ’Tis not in mortals to command success ; 

But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.” 

" Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.” 

“ I think the Romans call it Stoicism.” 

“ My voice is still for war.” 

" When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, 

The post of honour is a private station.” 

Not to mention — 

“ The woman who deliberates is lost.” 

And the eternal — 

" Plato, thou reasonest well,” 

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play ! 

* “The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on 
which a Turkish princess is espoused— to whom the Sultan is reported to pro- 
nounce, ' Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.’ The marriage, if 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 481 

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of “ Cato ” 
and the ‘‘ Campaign,” or for his merits as Secretary of State, or 
for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick’s husband, 
or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the 
Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire 
Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator 
of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much 
pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wTote. He came 
in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural 
voice. He came, the gentle satirist who hit no unfair blow; the 
kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went 
about, hanging and ruthless — a literary Jeffreys — in Addison’s 
kind court only minor cases were tried ; only peccadilloes and small 
sins against society : only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and 


uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; it 
neither found them, nor made them, equal. . . . Rowe’s ballad of ‘ The 
Despairing Shepherd ’ is said to have been written, either before or after 
marriage, upon this memorable pair.” — Dr. Johnson. 

“I received the news of Mr. Addison’s being declared Secretary of State 
with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. 
At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well 
to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Coun- 
tess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, 
and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.” 
— Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope: Works, Lord Wharncliffe's edit., 
vol. ii. p. III. 

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who in- 
herited, on her mother’s death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her 
father had purchased. She was of weak intellect, and died, unmarried, at an 
advanced age. 

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his 
Collection contains “Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison’s going to 
Ireland,” in which her Ladyship is called “ Chloe,” and Joseph Addison 
“ Lycidas ” ; besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled 
“ Colin’s Complaint.” But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison 
could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve 
as a specimen : — 

“ What though I have skill to complain — 

Though the Muses my temples have crowned ; 

What though, when they hear my soft strain. 

The virgins sit weeping around. 

Ah, Colin ! thy hopes are in vain ; 

Thy pipe and thy laurel resign ; 

Thy false one inclines to a swain 
Whose music is sweeter than thine.” 

2 H 


7 


482 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


hoops ; * or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux’ canes and snuff- 
l)oxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the ])eace of our 
sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the 
side-box ; or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian’s 
head ; or a citizen’s wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, 
and too little for her husband and children : every one of the little 
sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each 
with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of 
admonition. 

Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for 
a holiday. When Steele’s Tatler first began his prattle, Addison, 

* One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the 
Spectator tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger : — 

“Mr. Spectator, — You have diverted the town almost a whole month at 
the expense of the country ; it is now high time that you should give the country 
their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run 
into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell 
before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise 
every day more and more ; in short, sir, since our women know themselves to 
be out of the eye of the Spectator, they will be kept within no compass. You 
praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses ; for as the 
humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their super- 
fluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from 
their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make 
up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations 
at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. 

“ The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are airy 
and very proper for the season ; but this 1 look upon to be only a pretence and 
a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer 
these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be 
in the weather ; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constituted ladies, why 
they should require more cooling than their mothers before them ? 

“ I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late 
years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us 
at a distance. It is most certain that a woman’s honour cannot be better en- 
trenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety 
of outworks of lines and circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in 
whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, 
who might as well think of Sir George Etherege’s way of making love in a tub 
as in the midst of so many hoops. 

“ Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers 
who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that 
it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale 
appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others 
are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same 
prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think it 
is a .sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather tlian going out of 
it," &c. &c. — Spectator, No. 127. 


483 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 

then in Ireland, caught at his friend’s notion, poured in paper 
after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet 
fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily obser- 
vation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost 
endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old : full and ripe. 
He had not worked crop after crop from Ids brain, manuring hastily, 
sub-soiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like 
other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet : 
a few Latin poems — graceful prolusions ; a polite book of travels ; 
a dissertation on medals, not very deep ; four acts of a tragedy, a 
great classical exercise; and the “Campaign,” a large prize poem 
that wmn an enormous prize. But with his friend’s discovery of 
the “ Tatler,” Addison’s calling was found, and the most delightful 
talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep ; 
let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge 
of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go 
very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He 
was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must 
use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after 
his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night’s rest or his 
day’s tranquillity about any woman in his life ; * whereas poor Dick 
Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, 
and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do 
not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which 
I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about 
the world watching their pretty humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, 
rivalries : and noting them with the most charming archness. He 
sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet- 
show ; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace ; or at the 
auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling 
monster in Japan ; or at church, eyeing the width of their rival’s 
hoops, or the breadtli of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. 
Or he looks out of his window at the “ Garter” in Saint James’s 
Street, at Ardelia’s coach, as she blazes to the drawing-room with 
her coronet and six footmen ; and remembering that her father was 
a Turkey merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went 
to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her 
coach-box ; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden 
as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her 
chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the 

* “ Mr, Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and 
must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his 
own.” — Pope’s Letters. 


484 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute club 
men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. 
Besides drinking — which, alas ! is past praying for — you must 
know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious 
practice of smoking. Poor fellow ! He was a man’s man, remember. 
The only woman he did know, he didn’t write about. I take it 
there would not have been much humour in that story. i 

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the “ Grecian,” | 
or the “ Devil ” ; to pace ’Cliange and the Mall to mingle in s 

I 

V 

* “ I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till 
he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a 
choleric disposition, married or a bachelor ; with other particulars of a like ; 
nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To 
gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and 
my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings ; and shall give some 
account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief 
trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do 
myself the justice to open the work with my own history. . . . There runs 
a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about 
three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether 
this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or 
my father’s being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine ; for I am not so 
vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future 
life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. 
The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all 
the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream ; for, as she has 
often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would 
not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. 

“As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I 
shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputa- 
tion of a very sullen youth, but was always the favourite of my schoolmaster, 
who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not 
been long at the University before I distinguished myself by a most profound B 
silence ; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of | 
the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of a hundred words ; and, indeed, I do | 
not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. ... | 

“ I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in I 
most public places, though there are not more than half-a-dozen of my select 
friends that know me. ... There is no place of general resort wherein I do | 
not often make my appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into 
a round of politicians at ‘ Will’s,’ and listening with great attention to the I 
narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke | 
a pipe at ‘ Child’s,’ and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, r 
overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday 1 
night at ‘St. James’s Coffee-house’; and sometimes join the little committee p 
of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My K 
face is likewise very well known at the ‘Grecian,’ the ‘Cocoa-tree,’ and in r 
the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for Ik 






1 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON 485 

that great club of the world — sitting alone in it somehow : having 
good-will and kindness for every single man and woman in it — 
having need of some habit and custom binding him to some few ; 
never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little 
doubt about a man’s parts, and to damn him with faint praise) ; 
and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours 
of all of us — laughs the kindest laugh — points our neighbour’s 
foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured smiling 
confidence ; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers our 
foibles to our neighbour. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be 
without his follies and his charming little brain-cracks 1 * If the 
good knight did not call out to the people sleeping in church, and 
say “ Amen ” with such a delightful pomposity ; if he did not make 
a speech in the assize-court a p7'opos de bottes, and merely to show 
his dignity to Mr. Spectator : t if he did not mistake Madam Doll 

a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years ; and sometimes 
pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at ‘Jonathan’s.’ In short, 
wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my 
lips but in my own club. 

“Thus I live in the world rather as a 'Spectator,' of mankind than as one 
of the species ; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, 
soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in 
life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can 
discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better 
than those who are engaged in them — as standers-by discover blots which are 
apt to escape those who are in the game. ... In short, I have acted, in 
all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to 
preserve in this paper.” — Spectator, No. i. 

* "So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently 
been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency 
has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool.” — Macaulay. 

f " The Court was sat before Sir Roger came ; but, notwithstanding all the 
justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old 
knight at the head of them ; who for his reputation in the country took occasion 
to whisper in the judge’s ear that he was glad his Lordship had met with so much 
good weather in his circuit. I was listening to the proceedings of the Court 
with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and 
solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our 
laws ; when, after about an hour’s sitting, I observed, to my great surprise, in 
the midst of a trial , that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in 
some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, 
with a look of much business and great intrepidity. 

" Upon his first rising, the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran 
among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was 
so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, 
and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the 
Court as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the 
country.” — Spectator, No. 122. 


486 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden : if he were 
wiser than he is : if he had not his humour to salt his life, and w^ere 
but a mere English gentleman and game-preserver — of what worth j 
were he to us? We love him for his vanities as much as his 
virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him ; we are so fond of 
him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and 
out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities 
and follies, and out of that touched brain, and ouf of that honest 
manhood and simplicity — we get a result of happiness, goodness, 
tenderness, pity, piety ; such as, if my audience will think their 
reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the 
fortune to inspire. And why not ? Is the glory of Heaven to be 
sung only by gentlemen in black coats ? Must the truth be only 
expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments 
can nobody preach it ? Commend me to this dear preacher with- 
out orders — this parson in the tie-wig. When this man looks 
from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up 
to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human 
face lighted up with a more serene rapture : a human intellect 
thrilling with a piurer love and adoration than Joseph Addison’s. 
Listen to him : from your childhood you have known the verses : 
but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe ? — 

“ Soon as the evening shades prevail, 

The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 

And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth ; 

Whilst all the stars that I'ound her burn, 

And all the planets in their turn. 

Confirm the tidings as they roll, 

And spread the truth from pole to pole. 

What though, in solemn silence, all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ; 

What though no real voice nor sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found ; 

In reason’s ear they all rejoice, 

And utter forth a glorious voice. 

For ever singing as they shine. 

The hand that made us is divine.” 

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They shine 
out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath 
comes over that man’s mind : and his face lights up from it with 
a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs through 
his whole being. In the fields, in the town : looking at the birds 
in the trees : at tlie children in the streets : in the morning or in 
the moonlight : over his books in his own room : in a happy party 


CONGREVE AND ADDISON 


487 


at a country merry-making or a town assembly, good-will and peace 
to God’s creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill 
his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift’s life was 
tlie most wretched, I think Addison’s was one of the most enviable. 
A life prosperous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense fame 
and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name * 

* “Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opin on) on his 
death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true.”— Dr. Young. 
Spence's Anecdotes. 

“I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as 
an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, 
cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest 
transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of melancholy : 
on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite 
gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Miith is like a 
flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a 
moment ; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it 
with a steady and perpetual serenity.” — Addison : Spectator, No. 381. 


STEELE 


W HAT do we look for in studying the history of a past 
age? Is it to learn the political transactions and char- 
acters of the leading public men 1 is it to make ourselves 
acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out 
with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes 
that he has it entire ? What character of what great man is known | 
to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less 
happy. In common life don’t you often judge and misjudge a man’s 
whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone 
of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour — the cut 
of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your 
eyes, or poison your good opinion ; or at the end of years of intimacy 
it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something 
which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views 
about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different 
motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with 
those you know, how much more with those you don’t know ? Say> 
for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke 
of Marlborough. I read Swift’s history of the times in which he ^ 
took a part ; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one Avould 
think, into the politics of the age — he hints to me that Marlborough 
was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity ; he speaks 
of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except 
to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen’s latter days, which was 
to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marl- 
borough’s Life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of 
immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best 
information ; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive 
which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough’s career, 
which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and 
treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him 
finally on the Hanoverian side — the winning side : I get, I say, 
no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, 
and believe that Coxe’s portrait, or Swift’s portrait, is quite unlike 


STEELE 


48f) 

the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to 
be as sceptical about any otlier, and say to the Muse of History, 
“ 0 venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single state- 
ment you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse ! For all 
your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more 
trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your 
partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general’s oration to 
his soldiers : Nonsense ! He no more made it than Turpin made 
his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric on a 
hero : I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the 
condemnation of a loose character : I doubt it, and think you are 
prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an auto- 
biography : I doubt all autobiographies I ever read ; except those, 
perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. 
These have no object in setting themselves right with the public 
or their own consciences ; these have no motive for concealment 
or half-truths ; these call for no more confidence than I can cheer- 
fully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it 
by evidence. I take up a volume of Doctor Smollett, or a volume 
of the Sj^ectator, and say the fiction carries a greater amount of 
truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. 
Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the 
time ; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, 
the laughter, the ridicules of society — the old times live again, and 
I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian 
do more for me ? ” 

As we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatler and 
Spectator the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is 
revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London ; 
the churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux are 
gathering in the coffee-houses ; the gentry are going to the Drawing- 
room ; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops : the chairmen are 
jostling in the streets ; the footmen are running with links before 
the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country 
I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind 
him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. 
To make that journey from the Squire’s and back. Will is a week 
on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and 
Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my Lady 
comes to town in her post-chariot, lier people carry pistols to fire 
a salute on Captain Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers 
ride ahead to prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais 
on the road ; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the 
“ Bell ” or the “ Ram,” and he and his chamberlains bow her up 


490 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

the great stair to the state apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles 
into the courtyard, where the “ Exeter Fly ” is housed that per- 
forms the journey in eiglit days, God willing, having achieved its 
daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper 
and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where 
the Captain’s man — -having hung up his master’s half-pike — is 
at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to 
the townsfolk, who have their club in the chimney-corner. The 
Captain is ogling the chambermaid in the wooden gallery, or 
bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has ' 
come in the coach. The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the 
drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady’s 
bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military 
appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world 
does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be 
saddled and away with its owner half-an-hour before the “ Fly ” 
sets out on its last day’s flight. And some five miles on the road, 
as the “ Exeter Fly ” comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will 
suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, 
with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the . 
coach window, and bids the company to hand out their purses. ... 

It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the great kitchen 
in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We arrive 
at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly 
of a difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at 
Staines, where there passed a young fellow “ with a very tolerable 
periwig,” though, to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had 
a Ramillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days 
(being of that class of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy 
coram latronibus) and have seen my friend vith the grey mare ^ 
and the black vizard. Alas ! there always came a day in the life 
of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he 
passed — without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, 
accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff, — in a 
carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him, to 
a spot close by Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where 
a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a 
change in a century ; in a few years ! Within a few yards of that ■ 
gate the fields began: the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges 
of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has ' 
grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there 
now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep their f 
houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded ) 
to see that last act of a highwayman’s life, and make jokes on it, | 


STEELE 


491 

Swift laughed at liim, grimly advising him to provide a Holland 
shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black riband for 
his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully — shake hands with the 
hangman, and so — farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, 
and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the 
writings of our present humourists ! Compare those morals and 
ours — those manners and ours ! 

We can’t tell — you would not bear to be told — the whole truth 
regarding those men and manners. You could no more sufter in 
a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine 
gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne’s time, or hear what they 
heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is 
as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, 
the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure 
of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our “fast men”; 
permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman 
of Queen Anne’s days, whose biography has been preserved to us 
by the law reporters. 

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun 
was tried by his peers for the murder of William Moimtford, 
comedian. In “Howell’s State Trials,” the reader will find lot 
only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but 
of the times and manners of those days. ^ My Lord’s friend, a 
Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Brace- 
girdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, detormined to carry 
her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses, 
and a half-dozen of soldiers to aid him in the storm. The coach 
with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) 
took its station opposite my Lord Craven’s house in Drury Lane, 
by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the 
theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, 
Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled 
Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and 
his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the 
coach. Mr. Page called for help : the population of Drury Lane 
rose : it was impossible to effect the capture ; and bidding the 
soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off. Hill let 
go of his prey sulkily, and waited for other opportunities of revenge. 
The man of whom he was most jealous w^as Will Moimtford, the 
comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: 
and accordingly the Captain and his Lordship lay that night in wait 
for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, 
while Mohun engaged him in talk. Hill, in the words of the Attorney- 
General, made a pass and ran him clean through the body. 


492 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Sixty-one of my Lord’s peers finding him not guilty of murder, 
while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast nobleman was 
discharged : and made his appearance seven years after in another 
trial for murder — when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen 
of the military profession, were concerned in the fight which ended 
in the death of Captain Coote. 

Tliis jolly company were drinking together in “ Lockit’s ” at 
Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote 
and Captain French; whom my Lord Mohun and my Lord the 
Earl of Warwick* and Holland endeavoured to pacify. My Lord 
Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him £100 to 
buy his commission in the Guards ; once when the Captain was 
arrested for £13 by his tailor, my Lord lent him five guineas, 
often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of 
friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, 
being separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to 
drink ale again at the bar of “ Lockit’s.” The row began afresh — 
Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for 
chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their 
Lordships engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of 
Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was 
stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds — one 
especially, “ a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and 
piercing through the diaphragma,” which did for Captain Coote. 
Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun : hence the 
assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction in which these 
defunct fast men still live for tlie observation of the curious. My 
Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy -Governor of 
the Tower of London, having the axe carried before him by the 
gentleman gaoler, who stood Avith it at tlie bar at the right hand 
of the prisoner, turning the edge from him ; the prisoner, at his 

* The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father 
of the young Earl, who was brought to his stepfather’s bed to see “how a 
Christian could die.” He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day ; 
and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British Museum, I have 
seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular 
in London, as such daring spirits have been in our time. The anecdotists 
speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison 
for his second homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield’s embassy to the 
Elector of Hanover when Queen Anne sent the Garter to his Highness. The 
chronicler of the expedition speaks of his Lordship as an amiable young man, 
who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and reformed. He 
and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in 
which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable Baron’s name was Charles, and 
not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him (in Esmond). 


STEELE 


4.93 

approach, making three bows, one to his Grace the Lord High 
Steward, the other to the peers on each hand ; and his Grace and 
the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, 
august in periwigs, and nodding to tlie right and left, a host of 
the small come up out of the past and pass before us — the jolly 
captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over 
their cups — the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the 
bailiff oil the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lamp- 
less streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords 
are clashing in the garden within. “ Help there ! a gentleman is 
hurt ! ” The chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman 
over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the Bagnio 
in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon — a pretty tall 
gentleman : but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. 
Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler 
with your axe, where be you now ? The gentleman axeman’s head 
is off* his own shoulders ; the lords and judges can wag theirs no 
longer ; the bailiff’s writs have ceased to run : the honest chairmen’s 
pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked 
away into Hades — all is irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or 
Captain Coote. The subject of our night’s lecture saw all these 
peoide — rode in Captain Coote’s company of the Guards very 
probably — wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in 
many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern — fled from 
many a bailiff. ^ 

In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our great- 
great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful 
paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a 
later day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which 
the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the 
Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe 
herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had 
pretty much the monopoly. I have looked over many of the comic 
books with which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels 
of Swift’s coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the 
“ New Atlantis,” to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and 
Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the “London Spy” and 
several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and 
ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the 
farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent news- 
paper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides, the 
CrafUman^ and Postboy specimens — and queer specimens they are 
— of the higher literature of Queen Anne’s time. Here is an 
^ The Craftsman did not appear till 1726. 


494 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


abstract from a notable journal bearing date Wednesday, October 
13tli, 1708, and entitled The British Ai^ollo ; or, curious amuse- 
ments for the ingenious, by a society of gentlemen. The British 
Apollo invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects 
of wit, morality, science, and even religion ; and two out of its four 
pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the 
oracular penny prints of the present time. 

One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop 
should be the husband of one wife, argues that i)olygamy is justifi- 
able in the laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the British 
Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an 
answer. Celinda then wishes to know from “the gentleman,” con- 
cerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall have the satisfac- 
tion to know those whom they most valued in this transitory life. 
The gentlemen of the Apollo give but poor comfort to poor Celinda. j 
They are inclined to think not ; for, say they, since every inhabitant j 
of those regions will be infinitely dearer than here are our nearest 
relatives — what have we to do with a partial friendship in that 
happy place ? Poor Celinda ! it may have been a child or a lover 
whom she had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of British 
Apollo gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question 
for herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of 
gentlemen. 

From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, “ Why does 
hot water freeze sooner than cold ? ” Apollo replies, “ Hot water 
cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold ; but water once heated 
and cold may be subject to freeze by the evaporation of the 
spirituous parts of the water, whicli renders it less able to with- 
stand the power of frosty weather.” 

The next query is rather a delicate one. “ You, Mr. Apollo, | 
who are said to be the God of Wisdom, pray give us the reason 
why kissing is so much in fashion ; what benefit one receives by 
it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna.” To 
this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer : “ Pretty 
innocent Corinna ! Apollo owns that he was a little surprised by 
your kissing question, particularly at that part of it where you 
desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah ! madam, had I 
you a lover, you would not come to Ap)ollo for a solution ; since 
there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite 
satisfaction. As to its invention, ’tis certain nature was its author, 
and it began with the first courtship.” \ 

After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of 
poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on 
the tender passion; and the paper winds up with a letter from 


STEELE ■ 


495 

Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene 
before Lille, and proposals for publishing two sheets on the present 
state of Ethiopia, by Mr. Hill : all of which is printed for the 
authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press against Water Lane in 
Fleet Street. What a change it must have been — how Apollons 
oracles must have been struck dumb — when the Tatler appeared, 
and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began 
to speak ! 

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had 
begun to make acquaintance with English Court manners and 
English servitude, in Sir William Temple’s family, another Irish 
youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of 
Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had been 
appointed by James, Duke of Ormond, a governor of the House, 
and a patron of the lad’s family. The boy was an orphan, and 
described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, 
some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be 
chequered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune. 

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and 
ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little 
Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great 
number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he 
got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much 
trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by 
good fortune escape the flogging-block. One hundred and fifty years 
after, I have myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instru- 
ment of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a 
secluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School ; and 
have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and 
interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted 
himself to the tormentors. 

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went 
invariably into debt with the tart-woman ; ran out of bounds, and 
entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory engagements with the 
neighbouring lollipop vendors and piemen — exhibited an early fond- 
ness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from 
all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of 
authority for the statements here made of Steele’s early life; but 
if the child is father of the man, the flither of young Steele of 
Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the 
Life Guards — the father of Captain Steele of Lucas’s Fusiliers, who 
got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts — the 
father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of 
the Gazette^ the Tatler^ and Spectator^ the expelled Member of 


li 


M)6 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Parliament, and the author of the “Tender Husband ” and the “Con- 
scious Lovers ” ; if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele 
the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for- 
nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tu2)to, 

I beat, tuptomai, I am \vhii)ped, in any school in Great Britain. 

Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will 
remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the 
course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with 
the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. 
The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires such an awe. The head boy 
construes as well as the schoomaster himself. When he begins to 
speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes 
off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good- 
natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies 
of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency ; the 
idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in i 
their exercises and whipped because their poems were too good. I 
have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that : 
head boy of my childhood : we all thought he must be Prime 
Minister, nnd I was disappointed on meeting him in after life to 
find he was no more than six feet high. 

Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an j 
admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully j 
tlirough his life. Through the school and through the world, j 
whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, affec- ; 
tionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison, | 
wrote his exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on ] 
Addison’s messages ; fagged for him and blacked his shoes : to be | 
in Joe’s company was Dick’s greatest pleasure ; and he took a I 
sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless 
reverence, acquiescence, and affection.* 

Steele found Addison a stately College Don at Oxford, and him- I 
self did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, 
which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there ; 
and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime as other gentle- | 

men’s compositions at that age ; but being smitten with a sudden love 


* “Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all 
companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a 
little upon him ; but he always took it well.” — Pope. Spences Anecdotes. 

“ Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world : even in 
his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be 
pleased.” — D r. Young. Spence's Anecdotes. 

Steele, it may be noted, was a few weeks older than Addison. He was born 
in March, Addison on ist May, 1672. 


STEELE 497 

for military glory, he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle 
and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke 
of Ormond’s troop — the second — and, probably, with the rest of 
the gentlemen of his troop, “all mounted on black horses with 
white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced,” marched 
by King William, in Hyde Park, in November 1699,* and a great 
show of the nobility, besides twenty thousand people, and above 
a thousand coaches. “The Guards had just got their new clothes,” 
the London Post said : “they are extraordinary grand, and thought 
to be the finest body of horse in the world.” But Steele could 
hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, 
his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine 
he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. 

His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the 
Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas’s ' 
Fusiliers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, 
whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called 
the “ Christian Hero.” As for Dick, whilst writing this ardent 
devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the 
follies of the town ; it is related that all the officers of Lucas’s, 
and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.f And in truth 

* Steele appears to have been a trooper in the Life Guards ; but in 1699 he 
had received from Lord Cutts an ensigncy in the Coldstream Guards. In 
1702 he became captain in Lucas’s regiment, which, however, was not called 
“ Fusiliers.” — See Aitken’s Life of Steele. < 

t “ The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between 
two brilliant sisters, from his comedy The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode. Dick 
viTote this, he said, from “a necessity of enlivening his character,” which, it 
semed, the Christian Hero had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and 
respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious piece. 

\Scene draws and discovers Lady Charlotte, reading at a table , — Lady 
Harriet, playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing herself. ^ 

" L. Ha. Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me ^looking at herself 
as she speaks'] as sit staring at a book which I know you can’t attend. — Good Dr. 

Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there’s no putting Francis, 

Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent ^ 

from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it if you can. 

" L. Ch. You are the maddest girl 

“Z. Ha. Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing. 

[Looking over Charlotte.] — Oh! I see his name as plain as you do — F-r-a-n, 

Fran, — c-i-s, cis, Francis, ’tis in every line of the book. 

L. Ch. [rising]. It’s in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent 
company — but, granting ’twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy — ’tis more 
excusable to admire another than oneself. 

"Z. Ha. No, I think not, — yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one’s 
person, but I don’t admire myself, — Pish I I don’t believe my eyes to have that 


II 


4.08 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, 
though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor, 
Steele says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. 
He beat his breast and cried most i)iteously when he did repent : 
but as soon as crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. 
In that charming paper in the Tatler^ in which he records his 
father’s death, his mother’s griefs, his own most solemn and tender 
emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of 
wine, “ the same as is to be sold at Gan’away’s next week ” ; upon 
the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to 
instantly, “ drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to them- 
selves, and not separating till two o’clock in the morning.” 

His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, 

softness. [Looking in the glass.] They a’ n’t so piercing; no, ’tis only stuff, 
the men will be talking. — Some people are such admirers of teeth — Lord, what 
signifies teeth ! [Showing her teeth.] A very black-a-moor has as white a set 
of teeth as 1. — No, sister, I don’t admire myself, but I’ve a spirit of contradic- 
tion in me ; I don’t know I’m in love with myself, only to rival the men. 

"Z. Ch. Ay, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev’n of that rival of his, 
your dear self. 

“Z. Ha. Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that insolent 
intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical 
lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes, 

‘ The public envy and the public care, 

I shan’t be so easily catched — I thank him — I want but to be sure I should 
heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should 
depart this life or not. 

“ Z. Ch. Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humour 
does not at all become you. 

“Z. Ha. Vanity ! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than 
you wise folks: all your life’s an art. — Speak your soul. — Look you there. — 
[Hauling her to the glass.] Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you 
view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, that promptitude in 
your mien ? 

“ Z. Ch. Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken 
with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it. 

“ Z. Ha. Pshaw! Pshaw I Talk this musty tale to old Mrs, Fardingale, 
’tis too soon for me to think at that rate. 

"Z. Ch. They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very 
soon find it too late. — But tell me honestly, don’t you like Campley? 

“ Z. Ha. The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think 
of getting me so easily. — Oh, I hate a heart I can’t break when I please. — What 
makes the value of dear china, but that ’tis so brittle? — were it not for that, 
you might as well have stone mugs in your closet.” — The Funeral, Oct. 2 nd. 

"We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele’s]; there 
being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom his Tatlers 
had not made better by his recommendation of them.” — Cibber. 


STEELE 


4-99 

bringing him a bottle from the “ Rose,” or inviting him over to a 
bout there with Sir Plume and Mr. Diver ; and Dick wiped his 
eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took down his laced 
hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife and children, told 
them a lie about pressing business, and went off to the “ Rose ” 
to the jolly fellows. 

While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came home in 
rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging 
in the Hay market, young Captain Steele was cutting a mucli 
smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse 
Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter give an 
interview between the gallant Captain of Lucas’s, with his hat 
cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink, 
and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend 
and monitor of school-days, of all days'! How Dick must have 
bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the fine company 
he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts and popular actresses, 
and the number of bottles that he and my Lord and some other 
pretty fellows had cracked over-night at the “Devil,” or the 
“ Garter ” ! Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison’s calm smile and 
cold grey eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down 
the Mall to dine with the Guard at Saint James’s, before he turns, 
with his sober pace and threadbare suit, to walk back to his 
lodgings up the two pair of stairs'? Steele’s name was down for 
promotion, Dick always said himself, in the glorious, pious, and 
immortal William’s last table-book. Jonathan Swift’s name had 
been written there by the same hand too. 

Our worthy friend, the author of the “Christian Hero,” con- 
tinued to make no small figure about town by the use of his wits.* 
He was appointed Gazetteer: he wrote, in 1703, “The Tender 
Husband,” his second play, in which there is some delightful farcical 
writing, and of which he fondly owned in after life, and when 
Addison was no more, that there were “ many applauded strokes ” 
from Addison’s beloved hand.f Is it not a pleasant partnership 

* “There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made 
his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what he should say 
or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The best woman that ever 
man had cannot now lament and pine at his neglect of himself.”— Steele [of 
himself] : The Theatre. No. 12, Feb. 1719-20. 

f The Funeral supplies an admirable stroke of humour,— one which Sydney 
Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his lectures. 

The undertaker is talking to his employes about their duty. 

"Sable. Ha, you! — A little more upon the dismal \forming their counte- 
nances] ; this fellow has a good mortal look, — place him near the corpse : that 
wainscot-face must be o’top of the stairs ; that fellow’s almost in a fright (that 


li 


500 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


to remember? Can’t one fancy Steele full of spirits and youth, 
leaving his gay company to go to Addison’s lodging, where his 
friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, 
and poor? In 1704, Steele came on the town with another 
comedy, and behold it was so moral and religious, as poor Dick 
insisted, — so dull the town thought, — that the “Lying Lover” was 
damned.* 

Addison’s hour of success now came, and he was able to help 
our friend the “Christian Hero” in such a way, that, if there 
had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy champion upon his 
legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence assured. Steele 
procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps : he wrote so richly, 
so gracefully often, so kindly always, with such a pleasant wit and 
easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits and good humour, 
that his early papers may be compared to Addison’s own, and are 
t^o be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal pleasure.! 

]looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the end of the hall. So — But 
t’ll fix you all myself. Let’s have no laughing now on any provocation. Look 
yonder — that hale, well-looking puppy ! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I 
pity you, take you out of a great man’s service, and show you the pleasure of 
receiving wages ? Did not I give you ten, then fifteen, and twenty shillings a %veek 
■to be sorrowful f — and the more / give you I think the gladder you are !" 

{ * There is some confusion here as to dates. Steele’s first play, the Funeral 

was brought out in December 1701 ; his second, the Lying Lover in December 
11703 ; and his third the Tender Husband in April 1705. 


t “ From my own Apartment : N ( n >. 16. 


“ There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertainments in 
their possession, which they do not enjoy ; it is, therefore, a kind and good office 
to acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their attention to such 
instances of their good fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the 
married state often want such a monitor ; and pine away their days by looking 
upon the same condition in anguish and murmuring, which carries with it, in 
the opinion of others, a complication of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat 
from its inquietudes. 

“I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who was 
formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his family, for 
the winter ; and yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected me to 
dinner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and every member of it 
knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed, express the pleasure it is to 
be met by the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither. The 
boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is I that am 
knocking at the door ; and that child which loses the race to me runs back 
again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a 
pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me ; for the family has been 
out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject 
with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance ; after which, they 
began tp rally me upon a thousand little stories they heard in the country. 



CAPTAIN STEELE, 


W 











STEELE 501 

After the Tatler in 1711, the famous Si^ectator made its 
appeaiance, and tiiis was followed at various intervals, by many 
periodicals under the same editor — the Guardian — the Englishman 
—the Lover, whose love was rather insipid — the Reader, of whom 
the public saw no more after his second appearance— the Theatre, 
under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar, which Steele wrote while 
Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, to which post, and 

about my marriage to one of my neighbours' daughters ; upon which, the 
gentleman, my friend, said, ‘ Nay ; if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any 
of his old companions, I hope mine shall have the preference: there is Mrs. 
Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best of them. 
But I know him too well ; he is so enamoured with the very memory of those 
who flourished in our youth, that he will not so much as look upon the modern 
beauties. I remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a day to 
refresh your countenance and dress when Teraminta reigned in your heart. 
As we came up in the coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' 
With such reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed 
our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady left the 
room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the 
hand : ‘ Well, my good friend,’ says he, ‘ I am heartily glad to see thee ; I 
w'as afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you to- 
day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little altered 
since you followed her from the playhouse to find out who she was for me ? ' I 
perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little, i 
But, to turn the discourse, I said, ‘ She is not, indeed, that creature she was 
when she returned me the letter I carried from you, and told me, “She hoped, 
as I was a gentleman, I would be employed no more to trouble her, who had 
never offended me ; but would be so much the gentleman’s friend as to dissuade 
him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in.” You may remember I 
thought her in earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who 
made his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be 
for ever fifteen.’ ‘Fifteen!’ replied my good friend. ‘Ah! you little under- 
stand — you, that have lived a bachelor — how great, how exquisite a pleasure 
there is in being really beloved ! It is impossible that the most beauteous face 
in nature should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that 
excellent woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by hei 
watching with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which 
had like to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so 
many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation, think of 
her present state of health. But, as to what you say of fifteen, she gives me 
every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her beauty 
when I was in the vigour of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh 
instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to 
my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it ; 
there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the very instant it 
was occasioned by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests. Thus, 
at the same time, methinks, the love I conceived towards her for what she was, 
is heightened by my gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much 
above the idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of 


li 


502 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and 
to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour 
of knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession 
of George I. ; whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through 
disgrace, and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against 
traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. 
With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy broke up ; 

buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh ! she is an inestim- 
able jewel ! In her examination of her household affairs, she shows a certain 
fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her servants obey her like children ; 
and the meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for an offence not always to 
be seen in children in other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend ; ever 
since her sickness, things that gave me the quickest joy before turn now to a 
certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the poor 
things by their steps, and am considering what they must do should they lose 
their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used to take in telling my 
boy stories of battles, and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her 
baby, and the gossiping of it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.’ 

“ He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady entered, 
and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance, told us, ‘ she had been 
searching her closet for something very good to treat such an old friend as I 
was.’ Her husband’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her 
countenance ; and I saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observ- 
ing something in our looks which showed we had been more serious than 
ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced 
cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of ; and 
applying herself to me, said, with a smile, ‘ Mr. Bickerstaff, do not believe 
a word of what he tells you ; I shall still live to have you for my second, as I 
have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he has 
done since his coming to town. You must know he tells me, that he finds 
London is a much more healthy place than the country ; for he sees several of 
his old acquaintances and schoolfellows are here— young fellows with fair, full- 
bottomed periwigs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out open- 
breasted' My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agreeable 
humour, made her sit down with us. She did it with that easiness which is 
peculiar to women of sense ; and to keep up the good humour she had brought 
in with her, turned her raillery upon me. ‘ Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember 
you followed me one night from the playhouse ; suppose you should carry me 
thither to-morrow night, and lead me in the front box.’ This put us into a 
long field of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present, 
and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her ‘ I was glad she had 
transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest 
daughter was within half-a-year of being a toast.’ 

“We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young 
lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and 
immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, 
between laughing and chiding, would have put him out of the room ; but I 
would not part with him so. I found, upon conversation with him, though he 
was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a 


STEELE 503 

and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, whose hand, alas, 
was too careless to gripe it.* 

Steele married twice ; and outlived his places, his schemes, his 
wife, his income, his health, and almost everything but his kind 
heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn 
out and almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, where 
he had the remnant of a property. 

Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature ; all women 
especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first 
of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them. 
Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation in which 
women were held in Elizabeth’s time, as a reason why the women 
of Shakspeare make so small a figure in the poet’s dialogues, though 
he can himself pay splendid compliments to women, yet looks on 
them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the most 
consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before the 
arts and bravery of the besieger, man. There is a letter of Swift’s 
entitled “Advice to a very Young Married Lady,” which shows 
the Dean’s opinion of the female society of his day, and that if he 
despised man he utterly scorned women too. No lady .of our time 

great master of all the learning on the other side of eight years old. I per- 
ceived him a very great historian in s Fables ; but he frankly declared 

to me his mind, ‘ that he did not delight in that learning, because he did not 
believe they were true ; ’ for which reason I found he had very much turned 
his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives of Don Bellianis of 
Greece, Guy of Warwick, ‘the Seven Champions,’ and oth6r historians of 
that age. I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the for- 
wardness of his son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I 
found the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the 
course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagement of John 
Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, 
and loved Saint George for being the champion of England ; and by this means 
had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and 
honour. I was extolling his accomplishments, when his mother told me ‘ that 
the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar 
than he. Betty,’ said she, ‘ deals chiefly in fairies and sprights ; and some- 
times in a winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are 
afraid to go up to bed.’ 

“I sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry sometimes 
in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true 
relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I 
went home, considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a 
bachelor ; and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern to reflect, 
that whenever I go off I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive 
mood I return to my family ; that- is to say, to my maid, my dog, my cat, who 
only can be the better or worse for what happens to vc\^.''—The Tatkr. 

* He took what he could get, though it was not much. 


504 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


could be treated by any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, 
in such a tone of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In this 
performance. Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion that a 
woman is a fool : tells her to read books, as if reading was a novel 
accomplishment ; and informs her that “ not one gentleman’s 
daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand 
her own natural tongue.” Addison laughs at women equally ; but, 
with the gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at them 
and watches them, as if they were harmless, half-witted, amusing, 
pretty creatures, only made to be men’s playthings. It was Steele 
who first began to pay a manly homage to their goodness and 
understanding, as well as to their tenderness and beauty."^ In his 
comedies the heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties 
of Gloriana or Statira, as the characters were made to do in the 
chivalry romances and the high-flown dramas just going out of 
vogue; but Steele admires women’s virtue, acknowledges their 
sense, and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardour and 
strength which should win the good-will of all women to their 
hearty and respectful champion. It is this ardour, this respect, 
this manliness, which makes his comedies so pleasant and their 
heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a 
woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom 
Congreve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that “ to 
have loved her was a liberal education.” “ How often,” lie says, 
dedicating a volume to his wife, “how often has your tenderness 
removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my 
afflicted heart ! If there are such beings as guardian angels, they 
are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good 
in inclination, or more charming in form than my wife.” His 
breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with 
a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as 
with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that 
relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks 
in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been 

* “ As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are happy in 
this particular, that with them the one is much more nearly related to the other 
than in men. The love of a woman is inseparable from some esteem of her ; 
and as she is naturally the object of affection, the woman who has your esteem 
has also some degree of your love. A man that dotes on a woman for her 
beauty, will whisper his friend, ‘ That creature has a great deal of wit when 
you are well acquainted with her,’ And if you examine the bottom of your 
esteem for a woman, you will find you have a greater opinion of her beauty 
than anybody else. As to us men, I design to pass most of my time with the 
facetious Harry Bickerstaff ; but William Bickerstaff, the most prudent man 
of our family, shall be my executor," — Tatler, No. 206. 


STEELE 


505 


nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives 
his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is 
full of faults and careless blunders ; and redeemed, like that, by 
his sweet and compassionate nature 

We possess of poor Steele’s wild and chequered life some of 
the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man’s 
biography.* Most men’s letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, 


* The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the possession of 
his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock^ of Carmarthenshire. 
She married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. At her death, part 
of the letters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of 
Steele’s ; and part to Lady Trevor’s next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were 
published by the learned Nichols — from whose later edition of them, in 1809, 
our specimens are quoted. 

Here we have him, in his courtship — which was not a very long one : — 

To Mrs. Scurlock. 

Auz . 30, 1707. 

"Madam, — I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to 
write from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There is a 
dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money ; while all my ambi- 
tion, all my wealth, is love ! Love which animates my heart, sweetens my 
humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action bf my life. It is to my 
lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words 
and actions ; it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the 
admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day 
to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven 
which made thee such ; and join with me to implore its influence on our tender 
» innocent hours, and beseech the Author of love to bless the rites He has ordained 
— and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a 
resignation to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour 
to please Him and each other. 

" I am for ever your faithful servant, 

" Rich. Steele.” 


Some few hours afterwards, apparently. Mistress Scurlock received the next 
one — obviously written later in the day ! — 

“Saturday Night l ^ Aug . 30, 1707). 

" Dear lovely Mrs. Scurlock, — I have been in very good company, 
w'here your health, under the character of the woman I love best, has been often 
drunk ; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more 
Xhzxi I die for you. Rich. Steele.” 


To Mrs. Scurlock. 


“ Se ^ t . I, 1707 


" Madam, — It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend 
business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself 
up, or other people will do it for me. 

"A gentleman asked me this morning, ‘What news from Lisbon?’ and I 
answered, ‘She is exquisitely handsome.’ Another desired to know ‘when I 
had last been at Hampton Court?’ I replied, ‘It wiU be on Tuesday come 


II 


506 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

or down to tlie great men of our own time, if you will, are doctored 
compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards posterity. 
That dedication of Steele’s to his wife is an artificial performance, 
possibly ; at least, it is written with that degree of artifice which 
an orator uses in arranging a statement for the House, or a poet 
employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the stage. But 
there are some four hundred letters of Dick Steele’s to his wife, 
which that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could 
have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details 

se’nnight.’ Pr’ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that 
my mind may be in some composure. O Love ! 

“ ' A thousand torments dwell about thee, 

Yet who could live, to live without thee ? ’ 

‘ ‘ Methinks I could write a volume to you ; but all the language on earth 
would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, 

cj- “I am ever yours, 

“Rich. Steele,” 

Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and prospects 
to the young lady’s mamma. He dates from “ Lord Sunderland’s office, White- 
hall ; ” and states his clear income at ^^1025 per annum. “ I pro nise myself,” 
says he, “the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do 
things agreeable to you.” 

They were married, according to the most probable conjectures, about the 
7th Sept. Tliere are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next month ; she 
being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. General pro- 
gress, however, may be seen from the following notes. The “house in Bury 
Street, Saint James’s,” was now taken. 

To Mrs. Steele. 

Oct. 16, 1707. 

“ Dearest Being on Earth, — Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven 
o’clock, having met a schoolfellow from India, by whom I am to be informed 
on things this night which expressly concern your obedient husband, 

“Rich. Steele.” 

To Mrs. Steele. 

“ Eight o'clock, Fountain Tavern : 
Oct. 22, 1707. 

“ My Dear, — I beg of you not to be uneasy ; for I have done a great deal of 
business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my Gazette. 

“ Dec. 22, 1707. 

“ My dear, dear Wife, — I write to let you know I do not come home to 
dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give 
you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and 
obedient husband.” 

“Devil Tavern, Temple Bar: 
“/a«. 3, 1707-8. 

“Dear Prue, — I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and 


STEELE 


507 


of the business, pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair ; 
they have all the genuineness of conA^ersation ; they are as artless 
as a child’s prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some 
are written from the printing-office, where he is waiting for the 
proof-sheets of his Gazette, or his Tatler ; some are written from 
the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife “ within a pint 
of wine,” and where he has given a rendezvous to a friend or a 
money-lender : some are composed in a high state of vinous excite- 
ment, when his head is ffustered with burgundy, and his heart 

inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to 
dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more. 

" Your faithful husband,” &c. 

“/««. 14, 1707-8. 

“ Dear Wife, — Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley have desired 
me to sit an hour with them at the ‘ George ’ in Pall Mall, for which I desire 
your patience till twelve o’clock, and that you will go to bed,” &c. 

“Gray's Inn: Feb . 3, 1708. 

“Dear Prue, — If the man who has my shoemaker’s bill calls, let him be 
answered that I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to get 
Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that end. He is 
expected at home every minute. Your most humble, obedient servant,” &c. 

“Tennis-Court Coffee-house: May 1708. 

“ Dear Wife, — I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you ; 
in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker’s, one Leg, over against the 
‘ Devil Tavern,’ at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who 
wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful and 
at ease. 

“ If the printer’s boy be at home, send him hither ; and let Mrs. Todd send 
by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me 
early in the morning,” &c. 

Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels of 
tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Tatler made its appearance. The following 
curious note dates April 7th, 1710 : — 

“ I enclose to you [‘ Dear Prue’] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, and 
a note of £2-^ of Lewis’s, which will make up the ^^50 I promised for your 
ensuing occasion. 

“ I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the 
pleasure I have in your person and society. I only beg of you to add 
to your other charms a fearfulness to see a man that loves you in pain 
and uneasiness, to make me as happy as it is possible to be in this life. 
Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a cheerfulness . . . would 
not be amiss.” 

In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being “invited to supper 
to Mr. Boyle’s.” “Dear Prue,” he says on this occasion, “do not send after 
me, for I shall be ridiculous.” 


li 


508 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


abounds witli amorous warmth for his darling Prue ; some are 
under the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next 
morning : some, alas, are from tlie lock-up house, where the lawyers 
have impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace 
many years of the poor fellow’s career in these letters. In Sep- 
tember 1707 , from which day she began to save the letters, he 
married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have his passionate 
protestations to the lady ; his respectful proposals to her mamma ; 
his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired 
was completed ; his fond professions of contrition and promises of 
amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to 
be just cause for the one and need for the other. 

Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, 
“the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street,” 
and the next year he presented his wife with a country house at 
Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and sometimes 
four horses : he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own riding. 
He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, and 
always went abroad in a laced coat and a large black buckled 
periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was 
rather a well-to-do gentleman. Captain Steele, with the proceeds 
of his estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his 
income as a writer of the Gazette^ and his office of gentleman waiter 
to his Royal Highness Prince George. His second wife brought 
him a fortune too. But it is melancholy to relate, that with these 
houses and chariots and horses and income, the Captain was con- 
stantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking 
as constantly. In the course of a few pages we begin to find the 
shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, 
who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, “the 
beautifullest object in the world,” as he calls her, and evidently 
in reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of 
all waste paper, and lighted Dick’s pipes, which were smoked a 
hundred and forty years ago — he sends his wife now a guinea, 
then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of 
tea; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that 
his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two : or a request, 
perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and shaving-plate 
to the temporary lodging where the nomadic Captain is lying, 
hidden from the bailiffs. Oh that a Christian hero and late 
Captain in Lucas’s should be afraid of a dirty sheriffs officer ! 
That the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before a 
writ ! It stands to record in poor Dick’s own handwriting — the 
queer collection is preserved at the British Museum to this present 


STEELE 


509 

day — that the rent of the nuptial house in Jerrayn Street, sacred 
to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors from Bury 
Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an exe- 
cution on Captain Steele’s furniture. Addison sold the house and 
furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum which his 
incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue 
of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn’t in the least 
angry at Addison’s summary proceeding, and I dare say was very 
glad of any sale or execution, tlie result of which was to give him 
a little ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for 
which he couldn’t pay, and a country house at Hampton on which 
he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain Dick but 
the taking, in 1712, a much finer, larger, and grander house in 
Bloomsbury Square : where his unhappy landlord got no better 
satisfaction than his friend in Saint James’s, and where it is re- 
corded that Dick giving a grand entertainment, had a half-dozen 
queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble guests, and 
confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. “ I fared like 
a distressed prince,” the kindly prodigal writes, generously com- 
plimenting Addison for his assistance in the Tatler , — “ I fared 
like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to 'his 
aid. I was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once called him 
in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” Poor needy 
Prince of Bloomsbury ! think of him in his palace with his allies 
from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him. 

All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness and 
his good-humour. One narrated by Doctor Hoadly is exceedingly 
characteristic ; it shows the life of the time ; and our poor friend 
very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups. 

“ My father,” says Doctor John Hoadly, the Bishop’s son, 
“when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of 
the Whig meetings, held at the ‘ Trumpet,’ in Shire Lane, when 
Sir Kichard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double 
duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal 
memory of King William, it being the 4th November, as to drink 
his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic 
constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele 
was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. J ohn 
Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house ; and J ohn, 
pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company 
on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to 
the immortal memory^ and to return in the same manner. Steele, 
sitting next my father, whispered him — Do laugh. It is humanity 
to laugh. Sir Richard, in the evening, being too much in the 


li 


510 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing 
would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor’s, late 
as it was. However, the chairman carried him home, and got him 
upstairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them down- 
stairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed.” * 

There is another amusing story which, I believe, that renowned 
collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated 
into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much 
occupied with theatrical affairs, built himself a pretty private theatre, 
and before it was opened to his friends and guests, was anxious to 
try whether the hall was well adapted for hearing. Accordingly he 
placed himself in the most remote part of the gallery, and begged 
the carpenter who had built the house to speak up from the stage. 
The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, 
and did not know what to say to his honour ; but the good-natured 
knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and, 
after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible : 
“ Sir Richard Steele ! ” he said, “ for three months past me and my 
men has been a working in this theatre, and we’ve never seen the 
colour of your honour’s money : we will be very much obliged if 
you’ll pay it directly, for until you do we won’t drive in another 
nail.” Sir Richard said that his friend’s elocution was perfect, but 
that he didn’t like his subject much. 

The great charm of Steele’s writing is its naturalness. He 
wrote so quickly and carelessly that he was forced to make the 
reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He 
had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with 
the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with 
gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of the Court, with 
men and women of fashion ; with authors and wits, with the 
inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the frequenters of all 
the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all 
company because he liked it ; and you like to see his enjoyment as 
you like to see the glee of a boxful of children at the pantomime. 
He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged 
them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more 
than any man who ever wrote ; and full of hearty applause and 
sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and 
good-humour. His laugh rings through the whole house. He 

* Of this famous Bishop, Steele wrote — 

“ Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 

All faults he pardons, though he none commits.” 

This couplet was sent to Hoadly next day in an apologetic letter. 


STEELE 


511 


must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much 
as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for 
beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shak- 
speare aftectionately, and more than any man of his time : and 
according to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his 
company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with 
faint praise : he was in the world and of it ; and his enjoyment 
of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift’s savage indignation 
and Addison’s lonely serenity.* Permit me to read to you a 


* Here we have some of his later letters 


To Lady Steele. 

“ Hampton Court ; March i6, 1716-17. 

" Dear Prue, — If you have written anything to me which I should have 
received last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next post. 
. . . Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on 
the floor of the room, and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most 
delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great 
scholar ; he can read his primer ; and I have brought down my Virgil. He 
makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends 
and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged ; and I hope I shall be pardoned 
if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall 
think for his service.” 


To Lady Steele. [Undated.] 

“You tell me you want a little flattery from me. I assure you I know no 
one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom saying the 
best things would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for itself, con- 
sidering you as a very handsome woman that loves retirement— <.one who does 
not want wit, and yet is extremely sincere ; and so I could go through all the 
vices which attend the good qualities of other people, of which you are exempt. 
But, indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, 
which almost frustrates the good in you to me ; and that is, that you do not 
love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me 
proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine. . . . 

“ Your most affectionate obsequious husband, 

“ Richard Steele. 


“ A quarter of Molly’s schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well.” 


To Lady Steele. ^ 

March 26, T-ji-j. 

“My dearest Prue, — I have received yours, wherein you give me the 
sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head. . . . 
When I lay in your place, aud on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last 
night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake and in 
pain ; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep. 

“ For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your 
Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher. ..." 


At the time when the above later letters were written. Lady Steele was in 
W’ales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much 


It 


512 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar 
humour : the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. 
We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling 
and the most solemn, the humourist takes upon himself to comment. 
All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, 
in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of 
mankind * : — 


“Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, 

The world stood trembling at Jove’s throne ; 

While each pale sinner hung his head, 

Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said : 

‘ Offending race of human kind. 

By nature, reason, learning, blind ; 

You who through frailty stepped aside. 

And you who never err’d through pride ; 

You who in different sects were shamm’d, 

And come to see each other damn’d ; 

(So some folk told you, but they knew 
No more of Jove’s designs than you ;) 

The world’s mad business now is o’er. 

And I resent your freaks no more ; 

I to such blockheads set my wit, 

I damn such fools — go, go, you’re bit ! ’ ” 

Addison speaking on the very same theme, but with how 
different a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey 
[Spectator, No. 26) : — 

“ For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know 
what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature 
in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her 
most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the 
great, every emotion of envy dies within me ; when I read the 
epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out ; when I 
meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with 
compassion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I 
consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow.” 

(I have owned that I do not think Addison’s heart melted very much, 
or that he indulged very inordinately in the “vanity of grieving.”) 


occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he constantly 
assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It did not 
succeed, however. 

Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in 
Westminster Abbey. 

* Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter. 


STEELE 


513 


“ When,” he goes on, “ when I see kings lying by those who 
deposed them : when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the 
holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes — 
I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, 
factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several 
dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday, and some six 
hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of 
us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.” 

Our third humourist comes to speak on the same subject. You 
will have observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humour 
of each writer — the subject and the contrast — the fact of Death, 
and the play of individual thought by which each comments on it, 
and now hear the third writer — death, sorrow, and the grave, being 
for the moment also his theme. 

“The first sense of sorrow I ever knew,” Steele says in the 
Tatler, “ was upon the death of my father, at which time I was 
not quite five years of age : but was rather amazed at what all the 
house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why nobody 
would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his 
body lay, and my mother sate weeping alone by it. I had my 
battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin and calling 
papa ; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up 
there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond 
all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost 
smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, 

‘ Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more : for 
they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never 
come to us again.’ She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble 
spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief, amidst all the wildness 
of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of 
sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my 
very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since.” 

Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and 
men '? “ Fools, do you know anything of this mystery ? ” says 

Swift, stamping on a grave, and carrying his scorn for mankind 
actually beyond it. “ Miserable purblind wretches, how dare you 
to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can your dim 
eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven % ” 
Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much 
the same sentiment : and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the 
contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. “Look 
what a little vain dust we are,” he says, smiling over the tomb- 

7 2 k 


514 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


stones ; and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he 
looks heavenward, he speaks, in words of inspiration almost, of “ the 
Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make 
our appearance together.” 

The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak his 
word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father’s 
coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself 
an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural 
tears flow as he takes your hand and confidingly asks your sympathy. 
“ See how good and innocent and beautiful women are,” he says ; 
“ how tender little children ! Let us love these and one another, 
brother — God knows we have need of love and pardon.” So it is 
each looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays 
his own prayer. 

When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charm- 
ing scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it 1 One 
yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of 
a woman. A man is seldom more manly than when he is what 
you call unmanned — the source of his emotion is championship, 
pity, and courage ; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are 
innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. 
If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the 
most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers : but he is our 
friend : we love him, as children love with an A, because he 
is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or 
the wisest of mankind ; or a woman because she is the most vir- 
tuous, or talks French or plays the piano better than the rest of 
her sex ? I own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele 
the author, much better than much better men and much better 
authors. 

The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the com- 
pany here present must take his amiability upon hearsay, and 
certainly can’t make his intimate acquaintance. Not that Steele 
was worse than his time ; on the contrary, a far better, truer, and 
higher-hearted man than most who lived in it. But things were 
done in that society, and names were named, which would make 
you shudder now. What would be the sensation of a polite youth 
of the present day, if at a ball he saw the young object of his 
affections taking a box out of her pocket and a pinch of snuff : or 
if at dinner, by the charmer’s side, she deliberately put her knife 
into her mouth 1 If she cut her mother’s throat with it, mamma 
would scarcely be more shocked. I allude to these peculiarities of 
bygone times as an excuse for my favourite Steele, who was not 
worse, and often much more delicate than his neighbours. 


STEELE 


515 


There exists a curious document * descriptive of the manners 
of the last age, wliich describes most minutely the amusements 
and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time 
of which we are speaking j the time of Swift, and Addison, and 
Steele. 

When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the 
immortal personages of Swift’s polite conversation, came to break- 
fast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o’clock in the morning, my 
Lord Smart was absent at the levde. His Lordship was at home 
to dinner at three o’clock to receive his guests ; and we may sit 
down to this meal, like the Barmecide’s, and see the fops of the 
last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner, and 
were joined by a country baronet who told them they kept Court 
hours. These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin 
of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart 
carved the sirloin, my Lady Answerall helped the fish, and the 
gallant Colonel cut the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable 
inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of 
Sir John, who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beef- 
steak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon 
as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the 
house said should always be drunk after fish ; and my Lord Smart 
particularly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, 
which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When 
the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, 
and said, “Tom Neverout, my service to you.” ^ 

After the first course came almond-pudding, fritters, which the 
Colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the 
brilliant Miss Notable ; chickens, black puddings, and soup ; and 
Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer 
in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions that it should be 
carried down to the cook and dressed for the cook’s own dinner. 
Wine and small beer were drunk during the second course ; and 
when the Colonel called for beer, he called the butler Friend, and 
asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular remarks passed 
from the gentlefolk to the servants ; at breakfast several persons 
had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my Lady’s maid, who warmed 
the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings 
a pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman 
out to my Lady Match to come at six o’clock and play at quadrille, 
her Ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by 
the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentlemen 
asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that functionary 
* Swift’s Polite Conversation.” 


516 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


replied, with manly waggishness, “ She was at home just now, but 
she’s not gone out yet.” 

After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, came 
the third course, of whicli the chief dish was a hot venison pasty, 
which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. 
Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, 
partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed 
during this course, the gentlemen always pledging somebody with 
every glass which they drank ; and by this time the conversation 
between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and 
lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentle- 
woman was Tom’s sweetheart : on which Miss remarked, that she 
loved Tom “like pie,” After the goose, some of the gentlewomen 
took a dram of brandy, “ which was very good for the wholesomes,” 
Sir John said : and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, 
honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard 
full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from 
hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble 
host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, “No, faith, my 
Lonl ; I like your wine, and won’t put a churl upon a gentleman. 
Your lionour’s claret is good enough for me.” And so, the dinner 
over, the host said, “ Hang saving, bring us up a ha’porth of 
cheese.” 

The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was 
set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake before they 
went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen promised 
to join them in an hour : fresh bottles were brought ; the “ dead 
men,” meaning the empty bottles, removed ; and “ D’you hear, 
John ! bring clean glasses,” my Lord Smart said. On which the 
gallant Colonel Alwit said, “ I’ll keep my glass ; for wine is the 
best liquor to wash glasses in,” 

After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they 
all sat and played quadrille until three o’clock in the morning, 
when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble company 
went to bed. 

Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no 
inference from this queer picture— let all moralists here present 
deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in 
which a lady of fashion joked witli a footman, and carved a sirloin, 
and provided besides a great shoulder of veal, a goose, hare, rabbit, 
chickens, partridges, black puddings, and a ham for a dinner for 
eight Christians. What — what could have been the condition of 
that polite world in which people openly ate goose after almond- 
pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner 1 Fancy a 


STEELE 


517 


Colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of beignets 
d’ahricot and helping his neighbour, a young lady du monde I 
Fancy a noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at 
his table, “ Hang expense, bring us a ha’porth of cheese ! ” Such 
were the ladies of Saint James’s — such were the frequenters of 
“ White’s Chocolate House,” when Swift used to visit it, and Steele 
described it as the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, 
a hundred and forty years ago ! 

Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of his day, falls 
foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him : — 

“ Sir John Edgar, of the county of in Ireland, is of a 

middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture 
of somebody over a farmer’s chimney — a short chin, a short nose, a 
short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet 
with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he 
took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at 
being told that he was ugly, than he was by any reflection made 
upon his honour or understanding. 

‘^He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honourable 
family ; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flourished 
in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. He 
has testimony of this more authentic than the Heralds’ Oflice, or 
any human testimony. For God has marked, him more abundantly 
than he did Cain, and stamped his native country on his face, his 
understanding, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, above all, 
his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though 
long habit and length of days have worn it off his tongue.” * 

* Steele replied to Dennis in an “ Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called 
the Character of Sir John Edgar.” What Steele had to say against the cross- 
grained old Critic discovers a great deal of humour : — 

“ Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring a 
bailiff along with him. . . . 

"Your years are about sixty- five, an ugly vinegar face, that if you had any 
command you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pictured there ; 
not from any other motive. Your height is about some five feet five inches. 
You see I can give your exact measure as well as if I had taken your dimension 
with a good cudgel, which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good 
fortune to meet you. . . . 

"Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and your 
duck legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens. 

"Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself; and while 
they bark at men of sense, call him fool and knave that wrote them. Thou 
hast a great antipathy to thy own species ; and hatest the sight of a fool but 
in thy glass.” 

Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of a 


518 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither 
the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a 
dreadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exaggerated 
traits of the caricature, and everybody who knows him must 
recognise Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the undertakings 
of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took and furnished 
a house with the most generous intentions towards his friends, 
the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with this only 
drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when 
quarter-day came, — so, in his life he proposed to himself the most 
magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, 
and the advancement of his own and the national religion ; but 
when he had to pay for these articles — so difficult to purchase and 
so costly to maintain — poor Dick’s money Avas not forthcoming; 
and when Virtue called with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling 
excuse that he could not see her that morning, having a headache 
from being tipsy over-night; or when stern Duty rapped at tlie 
door Avith his account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He 
was shirking at the tavern; or had some particular business (of 
somebody’s else) at the ordinary ; or he was in hiding, or Avorse 
than in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation for a man ! 
— for a philanthropist — for a lover of right and truth — for a 
magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to dare to look in the 
face the Religion Avhich he adored and Avhich he had offended : to 
have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the friend 
whom he loved and who had trusted him ; to have the house which 
he had intended for his Avife, whom he loved passionately, and for 
her Ladyship’s company which he wished to entertain splendidly, 
in the possession of a bailiff’s man ; with a crowd of little creditors, 
— grocers, butchers, and small-coal men — lingering round the door 
with their bills and jeering at him. Alas for poor Dick Steele ! 

pecuniary service which he did him. When John heard of the fact — “ 'Sdeath ! ’’ 
cries John ; " why did not he keep out of the way as I did? ’’ 

The “ Answer ” concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten Pounds 
for the discovery of the authorship of Dennis’s pamphlet ; on which, says Steele, 
— “ I am only sorry he has offered so much, because the twentieth part would 
have overvalued his whole carcase. But I know the fellow that he keeps to 
give answers to his creditors will betray him ; for he gave me his word to bring 
officers on the top of the house that should make a hole through the ceiling of 
his garret, and so bring him to the punishment he deserves. Some people think 
this expedient out of the way, and that he would make his escap)e upon hearing 
the least noise. I say so too ; but it takes him up half-an-hour every night to 
fortify himself with his old hair trunk, two or three joint-stools, and some other 
lumber, which he ties together with cords so fast that it takes him up the same 
time in the morning to release himself.” 


STEELE 


519 


For nobody else, of course. There is no man or woman in our 
time who makes fine projects and gives them up from idleness or 
want of means. When duty calls upon us, we no doubt are always 
at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are 
stricken with remorse and promise reform, w'e keep our promise, 
and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are 
no chambers in our hearts, destined for family friends and affections, 
and now occupied by some Sin’s emissary and bailiff in possession. 
There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate remem- 
brances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering 
at our steps, or knocking at our door ! Of course not. We are 
living in the nineteenth century ; and poor Dick Steele stumbled 
and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and 
repented, and loved and suffered, and lived and died, scores of years 
ago. Peace be with him ! Let us think gently of one who was 
so gentle : let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated 
with human kindness. 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 


M atthew prior was one of those famous and lucky wits 
of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it be- 
hoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of 
no small genius, good-nature, and acumen.* He loved, he drank, he 
sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, “ in a little Dutch 
chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a 
friend on his right,” going out of town from the Hague to pass that 

* Gay calls him — “Dear Prior . . . beloved by every muse.” — Mr. Pope's 
Welcome from Greece. 

Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in the 
“ Journal to Stella.” “ Mr. Prior,” says Swift, “ walks to make himself fat, and 
I to keep myself down. . . . We often walk round the park together.” 

In Swift's works there is a curious tract called Remarks on the Characters of 
the Court of Queen Anne [Scott’s edition, vol. xii.]. The “ Remarks” are not 
by the Dean ; but at the end of each is an addition in italics from his hand, and 
these are always characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he adds, 
“ Detestably covetous,” &c. Prior is thus noticed — 

" Matthew Prior, Esquire, Commissioner of Trade. 

“On the Queen’s accession to the throne, he was continued in his office; 
is very well at Court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my Lord 
Jersey’s, whom he supports by his advice ; is one of the best poets in England, 
but very facetious in conversation. A thin hollow-looked man, turned of forty 
years old. This is near the truth.” 

“ Yet counting as far as to fifty his years. 

His virtues and vices were as other men’s are. 

High hopes he conceived and he smothered gi'eat fears, 

In a life party-coloured — half pleasure, half care. 

Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, 

He strove to make interest and freedom agree ; 

In public employments industrious and grave. 

And alone with his friends. Lord, how merry was he ! 

Now in equipage stately, now humble on foot. 

Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust ; 

And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about. 

He found riches had wings, and knew man w'as but dust.” 

— Prior’s Poems. [Abr my own monument.'] 


521 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

evening and the ensuing Sunday boozing at a Spielhaus with his 
companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting 
down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean 
master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian 
Chloe. A vintner’s son * * * § in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of 
Busby of the Rod, Prior attracted some notice by writing verses at 
Saint John’s College, Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided 
Montague f in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden; 
in ridicule of whose work, “ The Hind and the Panther,” he brought 
out that remarkable and famous burlesque, “ The Town and Country 
Mouse.” Aren’t you all acquainted with it ? Have you not all got 
it by heart % What ! have you never heard of it '? See what fame 
is made of ! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural 
consequence of “ The Town and Country Mouse,” Matthew Prior was 
made Secretary of Embassy at the Hague ! I believe it is dancing, 
rather than singing, which distinguishes the young English diplo- 
matists of the present day ; and have seen them in various parts 
perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior’s time it 
appears a different accomplishment led to preferment.! Could you 
write a copy of Alcaics ? that was the question. Could you turn 
out a neat epigram or two ? Could you compose ^ The Town and 
Country Mouse ” ? It is manifest that, by the possession of this 
faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and 
the interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the 
diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and 
his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, 
with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the waifs, and Prior 
was asked whether the palace of the King of England had any such 
decorations, “ The monuments of my master’s actions,” Mat said, of 
William, whom he cordially revered, “are to be seen everywhere 
except in his own house.” Bravo, Mat ! Prior rose to be full 
ambassador at Paris,§ where he somehow was cheated out of his 

* [He was a joiner’s son. His uncle was a vintner, and kept the Rhenish 
Wine House in Channel (now Cannon) Row, Westminster.] 

f “ They joined to produce a parody, entitled The Town and Country Mouse, 
part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends. Smart and 
Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice- 
told jest of the ‘ Rehearsal. ’ . , . There is nothing new or original in the 
idea. ... In this piece. Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by 
far the largest share.” — Scott’s Dryden, vol. i. p. 330. 

X [It is doubtful, however, whether Prior’s appointment had much to do with 
his literary reputation.] 

§ “ He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of Shrews- 
bury, but that that nobleman,” says Johnson, “refused to be associated with 
one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the 


H 


522 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


ambassadorial plate ; and in an heroic poem, addressed by him to 
her late lamented Majesty, Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnifi- 
cent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived 
him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty’s picture ; with- 
out that he can’t be happy. 

“ Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore : 

Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power 
Higher to raise the glories of thy reign, 

In words sublimer and a nobler strain 
May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. 

Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, 

The votive tablet I suspend.” 

With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is 
suspended for ever, like Mahomet’s coffin. News came that the 
Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were 
left there, hovering to this day, over the votive tablet. The picture 
was never got, any more than the spoons and dishes : the inspiration 
ceased, the verses were not wanted — the ambassador wasn’t wanted. 
Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffered disgrace along 
with his patrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and dis- 
appeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and emolu- 
ments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him.* They 
played for gallant stakes — the bold men of those days — and lived 
and gave splendidly. 

Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending 
an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off 
and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his 
wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late Excellency’s 
poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conver- 
sation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks slightingly of his 
lyrics ; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior’s seem to 
me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humourous 


Duke’s return next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity 
of ambassador. ” 

He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epitaph 

“ Nobles and heralds, by your leave. 

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, 

The son of Adam and of Eve : 

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?" 

But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke. 

* [Prior’s poems published (in folio) by subscription brought him ;(^40oo. Lord 
Harley (not his father, the Earl of Oxford) added ;^4ooo to this for the purchase 
of an estate (Down Hall) in Essex.] 


523 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

of English lyrical poems.* Horace is always in his mind ; and his 
song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and 
melody, his loves and his Epicureanism hear a great resemblance 
to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his 
works one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy 
similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. 
Ill his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless 
theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes — 

“ So whilst in fevered dreams we sink, 

And waking, taste what we desire. 

The real draught but feeds the fire, 

The dream is better than the drink. 

Our hopes like towering falcons aim 
At objects in an airy height : 

To stand aloof and view the flight, 

Is all the pleasure of the game.” 

Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days f was sing- 

His epigrams have the genuine sparkle : — 

The Remedy worse than the Disease. 

' ' “I sent for Radcliff ; was so ill, 

That other doctors gave me over ; 

He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill. 

And I was likely to recover. 

But when the wit began to wheeze. 

And wine had warmed the politician, < 

Cured yesterday of my disease, 

I died last night of my physician.” 


•* Yes, every poet is a fool ; 

By demonstration Ned can show it ; 
Happy could Ned’s inverted rule 
Prove every fool to be a poet.” 


“ On his deathbed poor Lubin lies, 

His spouse is in despair ; 

With frequent sobs and mutual cries 
They both express their care. 

‘A different cause,’ says Parson Sly, 

‘ The same effect may give ; 

Poor Lubin fears that he shall die. 

His wife that he may live.’ ” 

f [Thackeray, however, has ingeniously transposed the order of these verses, 
which, in the original, are not in the metre made familiar by a poet of our own 
days]. 


i 


524 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


ingl and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for 
his inconstancy, where lie says— 

“ The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun, 

How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest. 

If at morning o’er earth ’tis his fancy to run, 

At night he declines on his Thetis’s breast. 

So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, 

To thee, my delight, in the evening I come ; 

No matter what beauties I saw in my way. 

They were but my visits, but thou art my home ! 

Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war. 

And let us like Horace and Lydia agree : 

For thou art a girl as much brighter than her. 

As he was a poet sublimer than me,” 

If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? 
Love and pleasure find singers in all days. Roses are always blow- 
ing and fading — to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of 
them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay — 

“ She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers 
Pointing, the lovely moralist said : 

See, friend, in some few fleeting hours, ' 

See yonder what a change is made ! 

Ah me ! the blooming pride of May 
And that of Beauty are but one : 

At morn both flourish, bright and gay. 

Both fade at evening, pale and gone. 

At dawn poor Stella danced and sung, 

The amorous youth around her bowed : 

At night her fatal knell was rung ; 

I saw, and kissed her in her shroud. 

Such as she is who died to-day. 

Such I, alas, may be to-morrow : 

Go, Damon, bid thy Muse display 
The justice of thy Chloe’s sorrow.” 

Damon’s knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on 
him! “Deus sit propitius huic potatori,” as Walter de Mapes 
sang.* Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior’s 

* Prior to Sir Thomas Han7ner. 

'' Aug . 4, 1709. 

"Dear Sir,— Friendship may live, I grant you, without being fed and 
cherished by correspondence ; but with that additional benefit I am of opinion 
it will look more cheerful and thrive better : for in this case, as in love, though 
a man is sure of his own constancy, yet his happiness depends a good deal 
upon the sentiments of another, and while you and Chloe are alive, ’tis not 


i 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 525 

verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old 
moralist had studied them as well as Mr. Thomas Moore, and 
defended them and showed that he remembered them very well 

enough that I love you both, except I am sure you both love me again ; and 
as one of her scrawls fortifies my mind more against affliction than all Epic- 
tetus, with Simplicius’s comments into the bargain, so your single letter gave 
me more real pleasure than all the works of Plato. ... I must return my 
answer to your very kind question concerning my health. The Bath waters 
have done a good deal towards the recovery of it, and the great specific. Cape 
caballum, will, I think, confirm it. Upon this head I must tell you that my 
mare Betty grows blind, and may one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my 
cure : if at Rixham fair any pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen 
hands presented himself, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, 
one of your servants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. 
This, sir, is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch 
widow, with a good jointure, that has her goings and is not very skittish, pray 
be pleased to cast your eye on her for me too. You see, sir, the great trust I 
repose in your skill and honour, when I dare put two such commissions in your 
hand. . . .” — The Hanmer Correspondence , p. 120. 

From Mr. Prior. 

“ Paris : xst-iiih May , 1714. 

“My dear Lord and Friend, — Matthew never had so great occasion to 
write a word to Henry as now : it is noised here that I am soon to return. The 
question that I wish I could answer to the many that ask, and to our friend 
Colbert de Torcy (to whom I made your compliments in the manner you com- 
manded) is, what is done for me ; and to what I am recalled? It may look 
like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like me? but it is not 
such ; what is to become of a person who had the honour to be chosen, and 
sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with what the 'Queen designed 
should make the peace ; returning with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the 
greatest men in England, and one of the finest heads in Europe (as they say 
here, if true or not, nimporte) ; having been left by him in the greatest char- 
acter (that of her Majesty’s Plenipotentiary), exercising that power conjointly 
with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and solely after his departure ; having here re- 
ceived more distinguished honour than any Minister, except an Ambassador, 
ever did, and some which were never given to any but who had that character ; 
having had all the success that could be expected ; having (God be thanked !) 
spared no pains, at a time when at home the peace is voted safe and honour- 
able — at a time when the Earl of Oxford is Lord Treasurer and Lord Boling- 
broke First Secretary of State? This unfortunate person, I say, neglected, 
forgot, unnamed to anything that may speak the Queen satisfied with his 
services, or his friends concerned as to his fortune. 

“Mr. de Torcy put me quite out of countenance, the other day, by a pity 
that wounded me deeper than ever did the cruelty of the late Lord Godolphin. 
He said he would write to Robin and Harry about me. God forbid, my Lord, 
that I should need any foreign intercession, or owe the least to any Frenchman 
living, besides the decency of behaviour and the returns of common civility : 
some say I am to go to Baden, others that I am to be added to the Commis- 
sioners for settling the commerce. In all cases I am ready, but in the mean- 
time, die aliquid de tribus capellis. Neither of these two are, I presume. 


i 


526 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


too, on an occasion when their morality was called in question by 
that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esquire, of Auchinleck.* 

In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a 
favourite, and to have a good place.! In his set all were fond of him. 

honours or rewards, neither of them (let me say to my dear Lord Bolingbroke, 
and let him not be angry with me) are what Drift may aspire to, and what 
Mr. Whitworth, who was his fellow-clerk, has or may possess. I am far from 
desiring to lessen the great merit of the gentleman I named, for I heartily esteem 
and love him ; but in this trade of ours, my Lord, in which you are the general, 
as in that of the soldiery, there is a certain right acquired by time and long 
service. You would do anything for your Queen’s service, but you would not 
be contented to descend, and be degraded to a charge, no way proportioned to 
that of Secretary of State, any more than Mr. Ross, though he would charge a 
party with a halbard in his hand, would be content all his life after to be 
Serjeant. Was my Lord Dartmouth, from Secretary, returned again to be 
Commissioner of Trade, or from Secretary of War, would Frank Gwyn think 
himself kindly used to be returned again to be Commissioner? In short, my 
Lord, you have put me above myself, and if I am to return to myself, I shall re- 
turn to something very discontented and uneasy. I am sure, my Lord, you will 
make the best use you can of this hint for my good. If I am to have anything, 
it will certainly be for her Majesty s service, and the credit of my friends in the 
Ministry, that it be done before I am recalled from home, lest the world may 
think either that I have merited to be disgraced, or that ye dare not stand by 
me. If nothing is to be done, Jiat voluntas Dei. I have writ to Lord Treasurer 
upon this subject, and having implored your kind intercession, I promise you it 
is the last remonstrance of this kind that I will ever make. Adieu, my Lord, 
all honour, health, and pleasure to you. 

“ Yours ever. Matt. 

“ P.S. — Lady Jersey is just gone from me. We drank your healths together 
in usquebaugh after our tea : we are the greatest friends alive. Once more adieu. 
There is no such thing as the ‘ Book of Travels ’ you mentioned ; if there be, 
let friend Tilson send us more particular account of them, for neither I nor 
Jacob Tonson can find them. Pray send Barton back to me, I hope with some 
comfortable tidings.” — Bolingbroke' s Letters. 

* ” I asked whether Prior’s poems were to be printed entire; Johnson said 
they were. I mentioned Lord Hales’s censure of Prior in his preface to a col- 
lection of sacred poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a 
great many years ago, where he mentions ‘ these impure tales, which will be 
the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious author.’ Johnson ; ' Sir, Lord Hales 
has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord 
Hales thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people.’ I 
instanced the tale of ‘ Paulo Purganti and his wife.’ Johnson : ‘ Sir, there is 
nothing there but that his wife wanted to be kissed, when poor Paulo was out 
of pocket. No, sir. Prior is a lady’s book. No lady is ashamed to have it 
standing in her library.” — Boswell’s Life of Johnson. 

f Gay was of an old Devonshire family, but his pecuniary prospects not 
being great, was placed in his youth in the house of a silk-mercer in London. 
He was born in i688— Pope’s year [It has been lately shown that Gay was born 
in 1685], and in 1712 the Duchess of Monmouth made him her secretary. Next 


527 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

His success offended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He 
was talked of for Court favour, and hoped to win it ; but the Court 
favour jilted him. Craggs gave him some South Sea stock ; and at 
one time Gay had very nearly made his fortune. But Fortune shook 
her swift wings and jilted him too ; and so his friends, instead of being 
angry with him, and jealous of him, were kind and fond of honest 
Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of 
the last century. Gay’s face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It 
appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress and 
neglige of learning, without w^hich the painters of those days scarcely 
ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an 
honest boyish glee — an artless sweet humour. He was so kind, so 
gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally w’oebegone 
at others, such a natural good creature, that the Giants loved him. 
The great Swift w^as gentle and sportive with him,* as the enormous 
Brobdingnag maids of honour were with little Gulliver. He could 
frisk and fondle round Pope,t and sport, and bark, and caper, without 

year he published his Rural Sports, which he dedicated to Pope, and so made 
an acquaintance which became a memorable friendship. 

" Gay,” says Pope, “ was quite a natural man, — wholly without art or design, 
and spoke just what he thought and as he thought it. He dangled for twenty 
years about a Court, and at last was offered to be made usher to the young 
princesses. Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock in the South Sea 
year ; and he was once worth £2.0,000, but lost it all again. He got about ^^400 
by the first ‘ Beggar’s Opera,’ and ;^iioo or ;^i20o by the second. He was 
negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, the Duke of Queensberry took his 
money into his keeping, and let him only have what was necessary out of it, 
and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion for much. He died 
worth upwards of ^^3000.” — Pope. Spences Anecdotes. 

* " Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I knew.” 
— Swift, To Lady Betty Germaine, Jan. 1733. 

f “ Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; 

In wit a man ; simplicity, a child ; 

With native humour temp’ring virtuous rage, 

Form’d to delight at once and lash the age ; 

Above temptation in a low estate, 

And uncorrupted e’en among the great : 

A safe companion, and an easy friend, 

Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end. 

These are thy honours ; not that here thy bust 
Is mixed with heroes, or with kings thy dust ; 

But that the worthy and the good shall say. 

Striking their pensive bosoms, 'Here lies Gay.’ ” 

— Pope’s Epitaph on Gay. 

** A hare who in a civil way, 

Complied with everything, like Gay.” 

— Fables^ ** The Hare and many Friends.” 




528 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

offending the most tliin-skinned of poets and men ; and wlien he 
was jilted in that little Court affair of which we have spoken, his 
warm-hearted patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry * 
(the “ Kitty, beautiful and young,” of Prior) pleaded his cause 
^ 7 ith indignation, and quitted the Court in a huff, carrying off with 
them into their retirement their kind gentle protegd. With these 
kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful as those 
who harboured Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay 

* “I can give you no account of Gay,” says Pope curiously, “since he 
was raffled for, and won back by his Duchess.” — Works, Roscoes ed., vol. ix. 
P- 392. 

Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne brought 
back Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the Secretaryship of that 
nobleman, of which he had had but a short tenure. 

Gay’s Court prospects were never happy from this time. — His dedication of 
the Shepherd s Week to Bolingbroke, Swift used to call the “ original sin ” which 
had hurt him with the house of Hanover ; — 

"Sept. 23, 1714. 

“ Dear Mr. Gay, — Welcome to your native soil ! welcome to your friends ! 
thrice welcome to me ! whether returned in glory, blest with Court interest, the 
love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes ; or melancholy 
with dejection, contemplative of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the 
future ; whether returned a triumphant Whig, or a desponding Tory, equally 
all hail ! equally beloved and welcome to me ! If happy, I am to partake in 
your elevation ; if unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart, and a 
retreat at Binfield in the worst of times at your service. If you are a Tory, or 
thought so by any man, I know it can proceed from nothing but your gratitude 
to a few people who endeavoured to serve you, and whose politics were never 
your concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your 
principles and mine (as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I 
know you will be an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I 
know you are incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for 
nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you 
are, all hail ! 

“One or two of your own friends complained they had heard nothing from 
you since the Queen’s death ; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay better 
than I, yet I had not once written to him in all his voyage. This I thought 
a convincing proof how truly one may be a friend to another without telling 
him so every month. But they had reasons, too, themselves to allege in your 
excuse, as men who really value one another wdll never want such as make 
their friends and themselves easy. The late universal concern in public affairs 
threw us all into a hurry of spirits : even I, who am more a philosopher than 
to expect anything from any reign, was borne away with the current, and full 
of the expectation of the successor. During your journeys, I knew not whither 
to aim a letter after you ; that was a sort of shooting flying ; add to this the 
demand Homer had upon me, to write fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, 
all which are at a conclusion for this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend ! 
that my labour is over ; come and make merry with me in much feasting. We 
will feed among the lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are not the Rosa- 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 529 

lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and 
his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and 
grew fat, and so ended.* He became very melancholy and lazy, 
sadly plethoric, and only occasionally diverting in his latter days. 
But everybody loved him, and the remembrance of his pretty little 
tricks ; and the raging old Dean of Saint Patrick’s, chafing in his 
banishment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope wrote him 
announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.f 

Swift’s letters to him are beautiful ; and having no purpose but 

lindas of Britain as charming as the Blousalindas of the Hague? or have the 
two great Pastoral poets of our nation renounced love at the same time? for 
Philips, immortal Philips, hath deserted, yea, and in a rustic manner kicked 
his Rosalind. Dr. Parnell and I have been inseparable ever since you went. 
We are now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, better 
engaged) your coming would be the greatest pleasure to us in the world. Talk 
not of expenses : Homer shall support his children. I beg a line from you, 
directed to the Post-house in Bath. Poor Parnell is in an ill state of health. 

“ Pardon me if I add a word of advice in the poetical way. Write something 
on the King, or Prince, or Princess. On whatsoever foot you may be with the 
Court, this can do no harm. I shall never know where to end, and am con- 
founded in the many things I have to say to you, though they all amount but 
to this, that I am, entirely, as ever, 

“ Your,” &c. 

Gay took the advice “ in the poetical way,” and published “ An Epistle to 
a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of her Royal Highness the Princess of 
Wales.” But though this brought him access to Court, and the attendance of 
the Prince and Princess at his farce of the “What d’ye calhit?” it did not 
bring him a place. On the accession of George II., he was offered the situation 
of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa (her Highness being then two years 
old) ; but “ by this offer,” says Johnson, “ he thought himself insulted.” 

* “ Gay was a great eater. — As the French philosopher used to prove his 
existence by Cogito, ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay’s existence is. Edit, 
ergo est." — Congreve, in a letter to Pope. Spence's Anecdotes 

t Swift endorsed the letter— " On my dear friend Mr. Gay’s death; re- 
ceived Dec. IS, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some 
misfortune.” 

“ It was by Swift’s interest that Gay was made known to Lord Bolingbroke, 
and obtained his patronage.”— Scott’s Swift, vol. i. p. 156. 

Pope wrote on the occasion of Gay s death, to Swift, thus . 

'^\ Dec . 5, 1732.] 

"... One of the nearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken all on 
a sudden by the unexpected death of poor Mr. Gay. An inflammatory fever 
hurried him out of this life in three days. ... He asked of you a few hours 
before when in acute torment by the inflammation in his bowels and breast. . . . 
His sisters, we suppose, will be his heirs, who are two widows. . . . Good God ! 
how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage ? In every friend we 
lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. God keep those we have left ! few 
are worth praying for, and one’s self the least of all. ” 


530 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


kindness in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or 
anger to wreak, every word the Dean says to liis favourite is natural, 
trustworthy, and kindly. His admiration for Gay’s parts and 
honesty, and his laughter at his weaknesses, were alike just and 
genuine. He paints his character in wonderful pleasant traits of 
jocular satire. “I writ lately to Mr. Pope,” Swift says, writing 
to Gay : “I wish you had a little villakin in his neighbourhood ; 
but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six 
horses would carry you to Japan.” “If your ramble,” says Swift, 
in another letter, “was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account 
of your health ; but I know your arts of patching up a journey 
between stage-coaches and friends’ coaches — for you are as arrant 
a cockney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my 
head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work 
in scheme, which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or 
three under-ones that may add another thousand pounds to your 
stock. And then I shall be in less pain about you. I know 
you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, 
without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds 
brings you but half-a-crown a day.” And then Swift goes off from 
Gay to pay some gi'and compliments to her Grace the Duchess of 
Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose 
radiance the Dean would have liked to warm himself too. 

But we have Gay here before us, in these letters — lazy, kindly, 
uncommonly idle ; rather slovenly, I’m afraid ; for ever eating and 
saying good things ; a little round French abbd of a man, sleek, 
soft-handed, and soft-hearted. 

Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than 
their works ; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem 
to illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay’s “ Fables ” 
which were written to benefit that amiable Prince the Duke of 
Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, 
I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth ; 
and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon 
the illustrious young Prince, whose manners they were intended to 
mollify, and whose natural ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist 
perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the 
“ Shepherd’s Week,” and the burlesque poem of “ Trivia,” any man 
fond of lazy literature will find delightful at the present day, and 
must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to 
])oetry what charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture : 
graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accom- 
panying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with 
gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribands to their 


531 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

crooks and waistcoats and bodices, danced their loves to a minuet- 
tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from 
the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair 
or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles ; or repose, 
simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery ; or 
piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best 
Naples in a stream of bergamot. Gay’s gay plan seems to me far 
pleasanter than that of Philips — his rival and Pope’s — a serious 
and dreary idyllic cockney ; not that Gay’s “ Bumkinets ” and 
“ Hobnelias ” are a whit more natural than the would-be serious 
characters of the other posture-master ; but the quality of this true 
humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a 
secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics 
and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music — 
as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy 
and a monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and 
pirouetting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of 
love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins 
affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of 
nature ! It was this which made the great folk and Court ladies 
free and friendly with John Gay — which made Pope and Arbuthnot 
love him — which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought 
of him — and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies 
which obscured the lonely tyrant’s brain, as . he heard Gay’s voice 
with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter. 

What used to be said about Rubini,* qu'il avail des larmes dans 
la voix, may be said of Gay,t and of one other humourist of whom we 
shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight, | 

* [This was said earlier of Mdlle. Duchesnois of the Theatre Fran9ais, who 
was not beautiful, but had a most beautiful voice]. 

f “Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. ‘He could play on the 
flute,’ says Malone, ' and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so happily some of 
the airs in the Beggar s Opera. ' ” — Notes to Spence. 

X " ’Twas when the seas were roaring 
With hollow blasts of wind, 

A damsel lay deploring 
All on a rock reclined. 

Wide o’er the foaming billows 
She cast a wistful look ; 

Her head was crown’d with willows 
That trembled o’er the brook. 

' Twelve months are gone and over, 

And nine long tedious days ; 

Why didst thou, venturous lover — 

Why didst thou trust the seas ? 


K 


532 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

in the “ Beggar’s Opera” * and in its wearisome continuation (where 
the verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), 
there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It 
charms and melts you. It’s indefinable, but it exists ^ and is the 
property of John Gay’s and Oliver Goldsmith’s best verse as fra- 
grance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose. 

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous 

Cease, cease, thou cruel Ocean, 

And let my lover rest ; 

Ah ! what’s thy troubled motion 
To that within my breast ? 

* The merchant, robb’d of pleasure, 

Sees tempests in despair ; 

But what's the loss of treasure 
To losing of my dear ? 

Should you some coast be laid on, 

Where gold and diamonds grow, 

You’d find a richer maiden. 

But none that loves you so. 

‘ How can they say that Nature 
Has nothing made in vain ; 

Why, then, beneath the water 
Should hideous rocks remain ? 

No eyes the rocks discover 
That lurk beneath the deep. 

To wreck the wandering lover. 

And leave the maid to weep ? ’ 

All melancholy lying. 

Thus wailed she for her dear ; 

Repay’d each blast with sighing, 

Each billow with a tear ; 

When o’er the white wave stooping, 

His floating corpse she spy’d ; 

Then like a lily drooping. 

She bow’d her head, and died.” 

— A Ballad from the “ What d’ye call it 9" 

"What can be prettier than Gay’s ballad, or, rather. Swift’s, Arbuthnot’s, 
Pope’s, and Gay’s, in the ‘ What d’ye call it?’ ‘ ’Twas when the seas were roar- 
ing’? I have been well informed that they all contributed.” — Cowper to 
Unwin, 1783. 

* " Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort 
of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a 
thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy 
on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the Beggar's Opera. He 
began on it, and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much 
like the project. As he carried it on, he ‘•howed what he wrote to both of us ; 


5S3 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delight- 
ful that it is always pleasant to hear : — 

“ I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic 
seat of my Lord Harcourt’s which he lent me. It overlooks a 
common field, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers 
as constant as ever were found in romance — beneath a spreading 
beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John 
Hewet ; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about 
five-and-twenty ; Sarah a brown woman of eighteen. John had for 
several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with 
Sarah ; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge 
to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the 
scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the 
blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this 
very morning that he had obtained her parents’ consent, and it was 
but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps 
this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of 
their wedding-clothes; and John was now matching several kinds 
of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to make her a 
present of knots for the day. While they were thus em^doyed (it 
was on the last of July) a terrible storm of thunder and lightning 
arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges 
afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock ; 
and John (who never separated from her), sat by her side, having 
raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Jmmediately 
there was heard so loud a crack, as if heaven had burst asunder. 
The labourers, all solicitous for each other’s safety, called to one 
another : those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, 
stepped to the place where they lay : they first saw a little smoke, 
and after, this faithful pair — John, with one arm about his Sarah’s 
neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the 
lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and 

and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice ; but it was 
wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would 
succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said, ' It would 
either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.’ We were all at the first 
night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged 
by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ‘ It will 
do — it must do ! — I see it in the eyes of them ! ’ This was a good while before 
the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon ; for the Duke [besides his own 
good taste] has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering 
the taste of the public. He was quite right in this as usual ; the good-nature 
of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a 
clamour of applause.” — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 


I 


534 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring 
on their bodies — only that Sarah’s eyebrow was a little singed, 
and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next 
day in one grave.” 

And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful 
is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought 
proper to steal it and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with 
whom he pretended to be in love in those days — my Lord Duke of 
Kingston’s daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then 
his Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople.* 

We are now come to the greatest name on our list — the highest 
among the poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists 
with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the “Dunciad” 
be not a humourist, if the poet of the “ Rape of the Lock ” be not 
a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Besides that brilliant genius 
and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men 
of letters should admire him as being the greatest literary artist 
that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought; he 
took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own ; 
borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a 
figure or a simile from a flower, or a river, stream, or any object 
which struck him in his walk, or contemplation of nature. He 
began to imitate at an early age ; t and taught himself to write by 
copying printed books. Then he passed into the hands of the 
priests, and from his first clerical master, who came to him when 
he was eight years old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another 
school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he had 
got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went with 
his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months 

* [This was a natural conjecture, but now appears to be erroneous. The 
letter seems to have been a joint composition of Gay and Pope, who were stay- 
ing together at Lord Harcourt’s house. Gay wrote to Fortescue, while Pope 
sent substantially the same letter to Martha Blount, Lord Bathurst, and Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu.— See Mr. Courthope’s notes in Pope’s Works, vol. 
ix., 284, 399.] 

t “Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were Mr. Pope’s great favourites, in the 
order they are named, in his first reading, till he was about twelve years old.” 
— Pope. Spence s Anecdotes. 

“Mr. Pope’s father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in hollands, 
wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when 
very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased ; and used often to send 
him back to new turn them. ‘ These are not good rhimes ; ’ for that was my 
husband’s word for verses.”— Pope’s Mother. Spence. 

“I wrote things. I’m ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 535 

under a fourth priest. “ And this was all the teaching I ever had,” 
he said, “ and God knows it extended a very little way.” 

When he had done with his priests he took to reading by him- 
self, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, 
especially for poetry. He learnt versification from Dryden, he 
said. In his youthful poem of “ Alcander,” he imitated every 
poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil. In a few 
years he had dipped into a gi’eat number of the English, French, 
Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. “This I did,” he says, “without 
any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages by 
hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than 
read the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my 
fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and 
woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I looked 
upon as the happiest in my life.” Is not here a beautiful holiday 
picture 1 The forest and the fairy story-book — the boy spelling 
Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Oid for the love 
of Chim^ne, or dreaming of Armida’s garden — peace and sunshine 
round about — the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him at 
his quiet home yonder— and Genius throbbing in his young heart, 
and whispering to him, “You shall be great, you shall be famous ; 
you too shall love and sing ; you will sing her so nobly that some 
kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill formed. Every poet 
had a love. Fate must give one to you too,” — and day by day he 
walks the forest, very likely looking out for that charmer. “ They 
were the happiest days of his life,” he says, when <he was only 
dreaming of his fame : when he had gained that mistress she was 
no consoler. 

That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the 
year 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, 

when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neighbouring 
islands ; and the poem opened under water with a description of the Court of 
Neptune.” — Pope. /did. 

“ His perpetual application (after he set to study of himself) reduced him in 
four years’ time to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physicians for a 
good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper ; and sat down 
calmly in a full expectation of death in a short time. Under this thought, he 
wrote letters to take a last farewell of some of his more particular friends, and, 
among the rest, one to the Abbd Southcote. The Abbd was extremely con- 
cerned both for his very ill state of health and the resolution he said he had 
taken. He thought there might yet be hope, and went immediately to Dr. 
Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told him Mr, Pope’s case, got 
full directions from him, and carried them down to Pope in Windsor Forest, 
The chief thing the Doctor ordered him was to apply less, and to ride every day. 
The following his advice soon restored him to his health.”— Pope. Spence. 


536 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

addressed to a certain Lady M , whom the youth courted, and 

to whom he expressed his ardour in language, to say no worse of it, 
that is entirely pert, odious, and affected. He imitated love-com- 
positions as he had been imitating love-poems just before — it was a 
sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion, expressed as became 
it. These unlucky letters found their way into print years after- 
wards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my 
hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope’s 
correspondence, let them pass over that first part of it ; over, 
perhaps, almost all Pope’s letters to women ; in which there is a 
tone of not pleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compli- 
ments and politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the 
little pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about 
his loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames and 
raptures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu ; but that passion probably came to a climax in an 
impertinence, and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or some 
such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour 
much more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble 
puny grimace of love, and paltering with passion. After Mr. Pope 
had sent off one of his fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a 
second draft from the rough copy, and favoured some other friend 
with it. He was so charmed with the letter of Gay’s that I have 
just quoted, that he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to 
Lady Mary as his own.* A gentleman who writes letters a deux 
fins, and after having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up 
the same dish rechauffe to a friend, is not very much in earnest 
about his loves, however much he may be in his piques and vanities 
when his impertinence gets its due. 

But, save that unlucky part of the “ Pope Correspondence,” 
I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more 
delightful, t You live in them in the finest company in the 

* [See note on p. 534. Pope, however, was capable of very similar perform- 
ances.] 

f Mr. Pope to the Rev. Mr. Broom, Pulham, Norfolk. 

Aug. i^th, 1730. 

"Dear Sir, — I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the 
death of Mr. Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have informed myself 
and you of the circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, 
though so early in life, and was declining for five or six months. It was not, 
as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but, I believe, rather a complica- 
tion first of gross humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not discharging 
themselves, as he used no sort of exercise. No man better bore the approaches 
of his dissolution (as I am told), or with less ostentation yielded up his being. 
The great modesty which you know was natural to him, and the great con- 


537 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

world. A little stately, perhaps ; a little apprHe and conscious 
that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening; 
but in the tone of their voices — pitched, as no doubt they are, 
beyond the mere conversation key— in the expression of their 
thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something 
generous, and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society of 
men who have filled the greatest parts in the world’s story — you 

tempt he had for all sorts of vanity and parade, never appeared more than in 
his last moments ; he had a conscious satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, 
in feeling himself honest, true, and unpretending to more than his own. So he 
died as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient contentment. 

“As to any papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few; for 
this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, or thought much of the applause of 
men. I know an instance when he did his utmost to conceal his own merit 
that way ; and if we join to this his natural love of ease, I fancy we must 
expect little of this sort : at least, I have heard of none, except some few 
further remarks on Waller (which his cautious integrity made him leave an 
order to be given to Mr. Tonson), and perhaps, though it is many years since 
I saw it, a translation of the first book of Oppian, He had begun a tragedy of 
Dion, but made small progress in it. 

“As to his other affairs, he died poor but honest, leaving no debts or 
legacies, except of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my lady, in token of 
respect, gratefulness, and mutual esteem. 

“ I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, 
unpretending, Christian, and philosophical character in his epitaph. There 
truth may be spoken in a few words ; as for flourish, "and oratory, and poetry, 
I leave them to younger and more lively writers, such as love writing for 
writing’s sake, and would rather show their own fine parts than report the 
valuable ones of any other man. So the elegy I renounce. 

“ I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so worthy a man, and a 
friend to us both. . . . 

“Adieu; let us love his memory and profit by his example. Am very 
sincerely, dear sir, 

“Your affectionate and real servant.” 

To the Earl of Burlington. 

August 1714 . 

“ My Lord, — I f your mare could speak, she would give you an account of 
what extraordinary company she had on the road, which, since she cannot do, 

I will. 

“ It was the enterprising Mr. Lintot, the redoubtable rival of Mr. Tonson, 
who, mounted on a stone-horse, overtook me in Windsor Forest. He said 
he heard I designed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and would, as my book- 
seller, by all means accompany me thither. 

“ I asked him where he got his horse? He answered he got it of his pub- 
lisher ; ‘for that rogue, my printer,’ said he, ‘disappointed me. I hoped to 
put him in good humour by a treat at the tavern of a brown fricassee of rabbits, 
which cost ten shillings, with two quarts of wine, besides my conversation. I 
thought myself cock-sure of his horse, which he readily promised me, but said 


It 


538 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


are with St. John the statesman ; Peterborough the conqueror ; 
Swift, the greatest wit of all times ; Gay, the kindliest laughter, — 
it is a privilege to sit in that compi'iny. Delightful and generous 
banquet ! with a little faith and a little fancy any one of us here 
may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures out of the past, 
and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there is always a 
certain cachet about great men — they may be as mean on many 

that Mr. Tonson had just such another design of going to Cambridge, expecting 

there the copy of a new kind of Horace from Dr. ; and if Mr. Tonson went, 

he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to have the printing of the said copy. 
So, in short, I borrowed this stone-horse of my publisher, which he had of Mr. 
Oldmixon for a debt. He lent me, too, the pretty boy you see after me. He 
was a smutty dog yesterday, and cost me more than two hours to wash the ink 
off his face ; but the devil is a fair-conditioned devil, and very forward in his 
catechism. If you have any more bags, he shall carry them.’ 

“I thought Mr. Lintot’s civility not to be neglected, so gave the boy a 
small bag containing three shirts and an Elzevir Virgil, and, mounting in an 
instant, proceeded on the road, with my man before, my courteous stationer 
beside, and the aforesaid devil behind. 

"Mr. Lintot began in this manner: ‘Now, damn them! What if they 
should put it into the newspaper how you and I went together to Oxford ? 
What would I care? If I should go down into Sussex, they would say I was 
gone to the Speaker; but what of that? If my son were but big enough to 
go on with the business, by G-d, I would keep as good company as old 
Jacob.’ 

" Hereupon, I inquired of the son. ‘ The lad,’ says he, ' has fine parts, but 
is somewhat sickly, much as you are. I spare for nothing in his education at 
Westminster. Pray, don’t you think Westminster to be the best school in 
England ? Most of the late Ministry came out of it ; so did many of this 
Ministry. I hope the boy will make his fortune.’ 

" ‘ Don’t you design to let him pass a year at Oxford ? ’ ‘To what purpose ? ’ 
said he. ‘ The Universities do but make pedants, and I intend to breed him a 
man of business. ’ 

‘ ‘ As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle, for 
which I expressed some solicitude. ' Nothing,’ says he. ‘ I can bear it well 
enough ; but, since we have the day before us, methinks it would be very 
pleasant for you to rest awhile under the woods.’ When we were alighted, 

‘ See, here, what a mighty pretty Horace I have in my pocket ! What if you 
amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again ? Lord ! if you pleased, 
what a clever miscellany might you make at leisure hours ! ’ ‘ Perhaps 
I may,’ said I, ‘if we ride on : the motion is an aid to my fancy ; a round 
trot very much awakens my spirits ; then jog on apace, and I’ll think as hard 
as I can.’ 

‘ ‘ Silence ensued for a full hour ; after which Mr. Lintot lugged the reins, 
stopped short, and broke out, ‘ Well, sir, how far have you gone ? ’ I answered, 
seven miles. ‘ Z— ds, sir,’ said Lintot, ‘ I thought you had done seven stanzas. 
Oldisworth, in a ramble round Wimbledon Hill, would translate a whole ode 
in half this time. I’ll say that for Oldisworth [though I lost by his Timothy’s], 
he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in England. I 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 539 

points as you or I, but they carry their great air — they speak of 
common life more largely and generously than common men do — 
they regard the world with a manlier countenance, and see its real 
features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only dare to look 
up at life through blinkers, or to have an opinion when there is a 
crowd to back it. He who reads these noble records of a past age, 
salutes and reverences the great spirits who adorn it. You may 

remember Dr. King would write verses in a tavern, three hours after he could 
not speak : and there is Sir Richard, in that rumbling old chariot of his, 
between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles’s Pound, shall make you half a Job.’ 

“ ‘Pray, Mr. Lintot,’ said I, ‘now you talk of translators, what is your 
method of managing them?’ ‘Sir,’ replied he, ‘these are the saddest pack 
of rogues in the world ; in a hungry fit, they’ll swear they understand all the 
languages in the universe. I have known one of them take down a Greek book 
upon my counter and cry, “Ah, this is Hebrew, and must read it from the 
latter end.” By G-d, I can never be sure in these fellows, for I neither 
understand Greek, Latin, French, nor Italian myself. But this is my way: I 
agree with them for ten shillings per sheet, with a proviso that I will have 
their doings corrected with whom I please ; so by one or the other they are 
led at last to the true sense of an author ; my judgment giving the negative to 
all my translators.’ ‘ Then how are you sure these correctors may not impose 
upon you?’ ‘Why, I get any civil gentleman (especially any Scotchman) 
that comes into my shop, to read the original to me in English ;f by this I 
know whether my first translator be deficient, and whether my corrector merits 
his money or not. 

“ ‘ I’ll tell you what happened to me last month.' I bargained with S 

for a new version of Lucretius, to publish against Tonson’s, agreeing to pay 
the author so many shillings at his producing so many lines. He made a great 
progress in a very short time, and I gave it to the corrector to compare with 
the Latin ; but he went directly to Creech’s translation, and found it the same, 
word for word, all but the first page. Now, what d’ye think I did? I arrested 
the translator for a cheat ; nay, and I stopped the corrector’s pay, too, upon the 
proof that he had made use of Creech instead of the original. ’ 

‘ ‘ ‘ Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics ? ’ ‘ Sir,’ said he, 

‘ nothing more easy. I can silence the most formidable of them : the rich 
ones for a sheet apiece of the blotted manuscript, which cost me nothing ; 
they’ll go about with it to their acquaintance, and pretend they had it from 
the author, who submitted it to their correction : this has given some of them 
such an air, that in time they come to be consulted with and dedicated to as 
the tiptop critics of the town. — As for the poor critics. I’ll give you one instance 
of my management, by which you may guess the rest : A lean man, that looked 
like a very good scholar, came to me t’other day ; he turned over your Homer, 
shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pish’d at every line of it. “ One 
would wonder,” says he, “at the strange presumption of some men; Homer 

is no such easy task as every stripling, every versifier ” he was going on 

when my wife called to dinner. “ Sir,” said I, “will you please to eat a piece of 
beef with me?” “ Mr. Lintot,” said he, “lam very sorry you should be at the 
expense of this great book: I am really concerned on your account.” “Sir, 
1 am much obliged to you : if you can dine upon a piece of beef, together with 


540 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


go home now and talk with St. John; you may take a volume 
from your library and listen to Swift and Pope. 

Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, 
Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life 
that is the most wholesome society ; learn to admire rightly ; the 
great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired ; 
they admired great things : narrow spirits admire basely, and 
worship meanly. I know nothing in any story more gallant and 

a slice of pudding ?” — “Mr. Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he 

would condescend to advise with men of learning ” — “Sir, the pudding 

is upon the table, if you please to go in.” My critic complies ; he comes to a 
taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath that the book is com- 
mendable, and the pudding excellent. 

“ ‘ Now, sir,’ continued Mr. Lintot, ' in return for the frankness I have 
shown, pray tell me, is it the opinion of your friends at Court that my Lord 
Lansdowne ,will be brought to the bar or not ? ’ I told him I heard he would 
not, and I hoped it, my Lord being one I had particular obligations to. — ‘ That 
may be,* replied Mr. Lintot ; ‘ but by G — if he is not, I shall lose the printing 
of a very good trial. ’ 

“These, my Lord, are a few traits with which you discern the genius of 
Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropped 
him as soon as I got to Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord Carlton, at 
Middleton. ... I am,” &c. 

Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope. 

‘' Sept . 29, 1725. 

“ I am now returning to the noble scene of Dublin — into the grand monde 
— for fear of burying my parts ; to signalise myself among curates and vicars, 
and correct all corruptions crept in relating to the weight of bread-and-butter 
through those dominions where I govern. I have employed my time (besides 
ditching) in finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my ‘ Travels ’ 
[Gulliver’s], in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the 
press when the world shall deserve them, or rather, when a printer shall be 
found brave enough to venture his ears. I like the scheme of our meeting 
after distresses and dispersions ; but the chief end I propo.se to myself in all 
my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it ; and if I could compass 
that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most 
indefatigable writer you have ever seen without reading. I am exceedingly 
pleased that you have done with translations ; Lord Treasurer Oxford often 
lamented that a rascally world should lay you under a necessity of misemploy- 
ing your genius for so long a time ; but since you will now be so much better 
employed, when you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. 
I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities ; and all my love 
is towards individuals — for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love 
Councillor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one ; it is so with physicians (I will 
not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. 
But principally I hate and detest that animal called man — although I heartily 
love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. 

"... I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that 


541 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

cheering than the love and friendship which this company of famous 
men bore towards one another. There never has been a society of 
men more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who 
dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking 
the society of men great and famous ? and for liking them for the 
qualities which made them so '? A mere pretty fellow from White’s 
could not have written the “ Patriot King,” and would very likely 
have despised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great 
St. John held to be one of the best and greatest of men: a mere 

definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only ratio7iis capax. . . . 
The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute — nay, I will hold a 
hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point. . . . 

“ Mr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot’s illness, which is a very 
sensible affliction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have lost that 
hardness of heart contracted by years and general conversation. I am daily 
losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. Oh ! if the world had 
but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my ‘ Travels ’ ! ” 

Mr. Pope to Dr. Swift. 

“ October 15 , 1725 . 

“I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. It 
makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more and 
more to your old friends. . . . Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke] who was once a 
powerful planet, but has now (after long experience of all that comes of shining) 
learned to be content with returning to his first point without the thought or 
ambition of shining at all. Here is another [Edward, Earl of Oxford], who 
thinks one of the greatest glories of his father was to have distinguished and 
loved you, and who loves you hereditarily. Here is Arbuthnot,<recovered from 
the jaws of death, and more pleased with the hope of seeing you again than of 
reviewing a world, every part of which he has long despised but what is made 
up of a few men like yourself. . . . 

“ Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs — and gene- 
rally by Tories too. Because he had humour, he was supposed to have dealt 
with Dr. Swift, in like manner as when any one had learning formerly, he was 
thought to have dealt with the devil. . . . 

‘ ‘ Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall ; I wish he had 
received no more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most improved 
mind since you saw him, that ever was improved without shifting into a new 
body, or being minus ab angelis. I have often imagined to myself, that 
if ever all of us meet again, after so many varieties and changes, after so much 
of the old world and of the old man in each of us has been altered, that scarce 
a single thought of the one, any more than a single atom of the other, remains 
just the same ; I have fancied, I say, that we should meet like the righteous in 
the millennium, quite in peace, divested of all our former passions, smiling at 
our past follies, and content to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity. 

‘ ‘ I designed to have left the following page for Dr. Arbuthnot to fill, but 
he is so touched with the period in yours to me, concerning him, that he intends 
to answer it by a whole letter. . , . ” 


H 


542 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


nobleman of the Court could no more have won Barcelona, than he 
could have written Peterborough’s letters to Pope,* which are as 
witty as Congreve : a mere Irish Dean could not have written 
“ Gulliver ” : and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all 
these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of his 
time. Addison had a senate; Pope reverenced his equals. He 
spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. His admiration 
for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some one said of liis friend, 
“ There is something in that great man which looks as if he was 
placed here by mistake.” “Yes,” Pope answered, “and when the 
comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an 
imagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home as 
a coach comes to one’s door for visitors.” So these great spirits 
spoke of one another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged 
gentlemen that ever dawdled round a club table so faithful and 
so friendly. 

We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the 
exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men’s men. 

* Of the Earl of Peterborough, Walpole says " He was one of those men 
of careless wit and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-7nots and idle 
verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the authors stare to 
find themselves authors. Such was this lord, of an advantageous figure and 
enterprising spirit ; as gallant as Amadis and as brave ; but a little more e.xpe- 
ditious in his journeys : for he is said to have seen more kings and more 
postillions than any man in Europe. . . . He was a man, as his friend said, 
who would neither live nor die like any other mortal.” 

From the Earl of Peterborough to Pope. 

** You must receive my letters with a just impartiality, and give grains of 
allowance for a gloomy or rainy day ; I sink grievously with the weather-glass, 
and am quite spiritless when oppressed with the thoughts of a birthday or a 
return. 

“Dutiful affection was bringing me to town; but undutiful laziness, and 
being much out of order, keep me in the country : however, if alive, I must 
make my appearance at the birthday. . . . 

“ You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman at 
a time either to praise or love. If I dispute with you upon this point, I 
doubt every jury will give a verdict against me. So, sir, with a Mahometan 
indulgence, I allow your pluralities, the favourite privilege of our church. 

“I find you don’t mend upon correction; again I tell you you must not 
think of women in a reasonable way ; you know we always make goddesses of 
those we adore upon earth ; and do not all the good men tell us we must lay 
aside reason in what relates to the Deity ? 

“ . . . I should have been glad of anything of Swift’s. Pray, when you write 
to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place as odd and as 
much out of the way as himself. Yours.” 

Peterborough married Mrs. Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer. 


54-3 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

Tliey spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of 
each day nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they dined, drank, 
and smoked. Wit and news went by word of mouth ; a journal 
of 1/10 contained tlie very smallest portion of one or the other. 
The chiefs spoke, the faithful habitues sat round ; strangers came 
to wonder and listen. Old Dry den had his headquarters at 
“ Will’s,” in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street : at which 
place Pope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company 
used to assemble on the first floor — what was called the dining-room 
floor in those days — and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. 
It is recorded that the beaux of the day thought it a great honour 
to be allowed to take a pinch out of Dry den’s snuffbox. When 
Addison began to reign, he w'ith a certain crafty propriety— a policy 
let us call it — which belonged to his nature, set up his court, 
and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was 
“Button’s,” opposite “Will’s.”* A quiet opposition, a silent 
assertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison’s 
ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Philips, Carey ; his master of the 
horse, honest Dick Steele, who was what Duroc was to Napoleon, 
or Hardy to Nelson : the man who performed his master’s bidding, 
and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel. Addison lived 
with these people for seven or eight hours every day. The male 
society passed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as 
much time as ladies of that age spent over spadille and manille. 

For a brief space, upon coming up to town. Pope formed 
part of King Joseph’s court, and was his rather too eager and 
obsequious humble servant.t Dick Steele, the editor of the Taller^ 

* “ Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick’s family, who, 
under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of 
Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the 
wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that when Addison had suffered 
any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from Button’s house. 

“ From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late 
and drank too much wine." — Dr. Johnson. 

Will’s Coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and "corner of 
Russell Street.” — See Handbook of London. 

t "My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712: I liked him 
then as well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his conversation. It 
was very soon after that Mr. Addison advised me ‘ not to be content with the 
applause of half the nation.’ He used to talk much and often to me, of 
moderation in parties : and used to blame his dear friend Steele for being too 
much of a party man. He encouraged me in my design of translating the Iliad, 
which was begun that year, and finished in 1718 .” — Pope. Spence s Anecdotes. 

" Addison had Budgell, and I think Philips, in the house with him. — Gay they 
would call one of my Hives. — They were angry with me for keeping so much 
with Dr. Swift and some of the late Ministry.” — P ope. Spences Anecdotes. 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


544 

Mr. Addison’s man, and his own man too — a person of no little 
figure in the world of letters — patronised the young poet, and set 
him a task or two. Young Mr. Poj>e did the tasks very quickly 
and smartly (he had been at the feet, quite as a boy, of Wycherley’s * 
decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that doting old wit) : 
he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get a footing 
and a recognition. He thought it an honour to be admitted into 
their company ; to have the confidence of Mr. Addison’s friend 
Captain Steele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honour of 
heralding Addison’s triumph of “ Cato ” with his admirable prologue, 
and heading the victorious procession as it were. Not content with 
this act of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself 

* To Mr. Blount. 

“ Jan . 21, 1715-16. 

“ I know of nothing that will be so interesting to you at present as some 
circumstances of the last act of that eminent comic poet and our friend, 
Wycherley. He had often told me, and I doubt not he did all his acquaint- 
ance, that he would marry as soon as his life was despaired of. Accordingly, 
a few days before his death, he underwent the ceremony, and joined together 
those two sacraments which wise men say we should be the last to receive ; 
for, if you observe, matrimony is placed after extreme unction in our cate- 
chism, as a kind of hint of the order of time in which they are to be taken. 
The old man then lay down, satisfied in the consciousness of having, by this 
one act, obliged a woman who (he was told) had merit, and shown an heroic 
resentment of the ill-usage of his next heir. Some hundred pounds which he 
had with the lady discharged his debts ; a jointure of ;,^50o a year made her a 
recompence ; and the nephew was left to comfort himself as well as he could 
with the miserable remains of a mortgaged estate. I saw our friend twice 
after this was done — less peevish in his sickness than he used to be in his 
health ; neither much afraid of dying, nor (which in him had been more 
likely) much ashamed of marrying. The evening before he expired, he called 
his young wife to the bedside, and earnestly entreated her not to deny him one 
request — the last he should make. Upon her assurances of consenting to it, 
he told her ; ‘ My dear, it is only this— that you will never marry an old man 
again.’ I cannot help remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit 
and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humour. 
Mr. Wycherley showed his even in his last compliment ; though I think his 
request a little hard, for why should he bar her from doubling her jointure on 
the same easy terms ? 

"So trivial as these circumstances are, I should not be displeased myself 
to know such trifles when they concern or characterize any eminent person. 
The wisest and wittiest of men are seldom wiser or wittier than others in these 
sober moments ; at least, our friend ended much in the same character he had 
lived in ; and Horace’s rule for play may as well be applied to him as a 
playwright : — 

" ' Servetur ad imum 

Qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet.’ 

"I am,” &c. 


545 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

by assaulting Addison’s enemies, and attacked John Dennis with a 
prose lampoon, which highly offended his lofty patron. Mr. Steele 
was instructed to write to Mr. Dennis, and inform him that Mr. 
Pope’s pamplilet against him was written quite without Mr. 
Addison’s approval.* Indeed, “ The Narrative of Dr. Robert 
Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D.” is a vulgar and mean satire, and 
such a blow as the magnificent Addison (iould never desire to see 
any partisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely 
allied with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that 
it has been printed in Swift’s works, too. It bears the foul marks 
of the master hand. Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart 
the prodigious genius of the young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, 
who had never seen a university in his life, and came and conquered 
the Dons and the doctors with his wit. He applauded, and loved 
him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief. I wish 
Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever 
has been penned would never have been WTitten then ; and one of 
the best characters the world ever knew would have been without a 
flaw. But he wlio had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope 
was more than that. When Pope, trying for himself, and soaring 
on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, was a genius, 
which no pinion of that age could follow, he rose and left Addison’s 
company, settling on his own eminence, and singing his own song. 

It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. 
Addison ; nor likely that after escaping from his vassalage and 
assuming an independent crown, the sovereign whdse allegiance 
he quitted should view him amicably, f They did not do wrong 
to mislike each other. They but followed the impulse of nature, 
and the consequence of position. When Bernadotte became heir 
to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden was naturally Napoleon’s 
enemy. “ There are many passions and tempers of mankind,” says 
Mr. Addison in the Sx>ectator^ speaking a couple of years before 

* “ Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the sefishness 
of Pope’s friendship ; and resolving that he should have the consequences of 
his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis by Steele that he was sorry for the 
insult.” — Johnson. Life of Addison. 

f “While I was heated with what I heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, 
to let him know ‘ that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his ; that if 
I was to speak of him severely in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty 
way ; that I should rather tell him himself fairly of his faults, and allow his 
good qualities ; and that it should be something in the following manner.’ I 
then subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on 
Addison. He used me very civilly ever after ; and never did me any injustice, 
that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after.” 
— Pope. Spence ' s Anecdotes. 

7 2 M 


546 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


the little differences between him and Mr. Pope took place, “ wliich 
naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising 
in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into 
the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as 
his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on 
their own deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and 
defame him, because they now see him the superior ; and those who 
were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal.” 
Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking tliat, as young Mr. Pope 
had not had the benefit of a university education, he couldn’t know 
Greek, therefore he couldn’t translate Homer, encourage his young 
friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, to translate that poet, and aid him 
with his own known scholarship and skill ? * It was natural that 
Mr. Addison should doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, 
should have a high opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, and should 
help that ingenious young man. It was natural, on the other hand, 
that Mr. Pope an<i Mr. Pope’s friends should believe that his 
counter-translation, suddenly advertised and so long written, though 
Tickell’s college friends had never heard of it — though, when Pope 
first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr. Addison knew 
nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen’s — it was natural 
that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, passions, and pre- 
judices of their own, should believe that Tickell’s translation was 
but an act of opposition against Pope, and that they should call 
Mr. Tickell’s emulation Mr. Addison’s envy^ — if envy it were. 

“And were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires, 

Blest with each talent and each art to please, 

And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. 

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ; 

View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes. 

And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise ; 

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. 

And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike. 

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 

Alike reserved to blame as to commend 
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend : 

Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged. 

And so obliging that he ne’er obliged ; 


* “That Tickell should have been guilty of a villainy seems to us highly 
improbable ; that Addison should have been guilty of a villainy seems to us 
highly improbable ; but that these two men should have conspired together to 
commit a villainy, seems, to us, improbable in a tenfold degree.”— Macaulav. 


547 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

Like Cato give his little senate laws, 

And sit attentive to his own applause ; 

While wits and templars every sentence raise, 

And wonder with a foolish face of praise ; 

Who but must laugh if such a man there be, 

Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? ’’ 

“ I sent the verses to Mr. Addison,” said Pope, “ and he 
used me very civilly ever after.” No wonder he did. It was 
shame very likely more than fear that silenced him. Johnson 
recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their 
quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to be con- 
temptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope’s must have pierced 
any scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison’s memory. 
His great flgure looks out on us from the past — stainless but for 
that — pale, calm, and beautiful ; it bleeds from that black wound. 
He should be drawn, like Saint Sebastian, with that arrow in his 
side. As he sent to Gay and asked his pardon, as he bade his 
stepson come and see his death, be sure he had forgiven Pope, 
when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.* 

Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, 
and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until 
two o’clock in the morning over punch and burgundy amidst the 
fumes of tobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the 
“ pace ” of those viveurs of the former age was awful. Peter- 
borough lived into the very jaws of death ; Godolphin laboured all 
day and gambled at night; Bolingbroke,t writing to Swift, from 

* [This story has been now upset by the researches of Mr. Dilke, Mr. Elwin, 
and others ; though, when Thackeray wrote, it was the accepted version. There 
is no reason to suppose that Addison ever saw the verses. The statement 
is part of an elaborate fiction concocted by Pope, and supported by manufactur- 
ing letters to Addison out of letters really written to another correspondent. 
The whole story may be found in the edition of Pope by Elwin and Courthope, 
and is one of the most curious cases of literary imposture on record. It is 
enough to say that all stain has been removed from Addison’s character. 
Thackeray would have rejoiced at that result, though he would have had to 
modify some of the eulogy bestowed upon Pope.] 

f Lord Bolingbroke to the Three Yahoos of Twickenhaon. 

July 23, 1726, 

“Jonathan, Alexander, John, most excellent Triumvirs of Par- 
nassus, — Though you are probably very indifferent where I am, or what I am 
doing, yet I resolve to believe the contrary. I persuade myself that you have 
sent at least fifteen times within this fortnight to Dawley farm, and that you 
are extremely mortified at my long silence. To relieve you, therefore, from this 
great anxiety of mind, I can do no less than write a few lines to you ; and I 
please myself beforehand with the vast pleasure which this epistle must needs 
give you. That I may add to this pleasure, and give further proofs of my 


H 


548 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Dawley, in his retirement, dating his letter at six o’clock in the 
morning, and rising, as he says, refreshed, serene, and calm, calls 
to mind the time of his London life ; when about that hour he used 
to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure, and jaded with business ; 
his head often full of schemes, and his heart as often full of anxiety. 
It was too hard, too coarse a life for the sensitive, sickly Pope. He 
was the only wit of the day, a friend writes to me, who wasn’t 
fat.* Swift was fat ; Addison was fat ; Steele was fat ; Gay and 
Thomson were preposterously fat — all that fuddling and punch- 
drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the lives 
and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew 
in a great measure from this boisterous London company, and being 
put into an independence by the gallant exertions of Swift t and his 
private friends, and by the enthusiastic national admiration which 
justly rewarded his great achievement of the “ Iliad,” purchased 
that famous villa of Twickenham which his song and life celebrated ; 
duteously bringing his old parent to live and die there, entertaining 
his friends there, and making occasional visits to London in his 
little chariot, in which Atterbury compared him to “ Homer in a 
nutshell.” 

“ Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man,” Pope quaintly said to 
Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous old 
patriarch of “Will’s.” With regard to Pope’s own manners, we 
have the best contemporary authority that they were singularly 
refined and polished. With his extraordinary sensibility, with his 
known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his power and dread of 
ridicule. Pope could have been no other than what we call a highly- 
bred person. I His closest friends, wdth the exception of Swift, 
were among the delights and ornaments of the polished society of 

beneficent temper, I will likewise inform you, that I shall be in your neigh- 
bourhood again by the end of next week : by which time I hope that Jonathan’s 
imagination of business will be succeeded by some imagination more becoming 
a professor of that divine science, la bagatelle. Adieu. Jonathan, Alexander, 
John, mirth be with you ! ’’ 

* Prior must be excepted from this observation. "He was lank and 
lean.” 

+ Swift exerted himself very much in promoting the Iliad subscription ; 
and also introduced Pope to Harley and Bolingbroke. Pope realised by the 
Iliad upwards of ^^5000, which he laid out partly in annuities, and partly in 
the purchase of his famous villa. Johnson remarks that " it would be hard to 
find a man so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in 
talking of his money." 

X " His (Pope’s) voice in common conversation was so naturally musical, 
that I remember honest Tom Southerne used always to call him ‘the little 
nightingale.' ” — Orrery. 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 549 

their age. Garth,* the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele 
has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his 
character was “ all beauty,” and whom Pope himself called the 
best of Christians without knowing it ; Arbuthnot,! one of the 

* Garth, whom Dryclen calls “generous as his Muse,” was a Yorkshire- 
inan. He graduated at Cambridge, and was made M.D. in 1691. He soon 
distinguished himself in his profession, by his poem of the “ Dispensary,” and 
in society, and pronounced Dryden’s funeral oration. He was a strict Whig, a 
notable member of the “ Kit-Cat,” and a friendly, convivial, able man. He was 
knighted by George I. , with the Duke of Marlborough’s sword. He died in 1718. 

t “Arbuthnot was the son of an Episcopal clergyman in Scotland, and belonged 
to an ancient and distinguished Scotch family. He was educated at Aberdeen ; 
and, coming up to London — according to a Scotch practice often enough alluded 
to — to make his fortune, first made himself known by An Examination of Dr. 
Woodward' s Account of the Deluge. He became physician successively to Prince 
George of Denmark and to Queen Anne. He is usually allowed to have been the 
most learned, as well as one of the most witty and humorous members of the 
Scriblerus Club. The opinion entertained of him by the humourists of the day 
is abundantly evidenced in their correspondence. When he found himself in his 
last illness, he wrote thus, from his retreat at Hampstead, to Swift : — 

“ ‘jHampstead : Oct. 4, 1734. 

“ ' My Dear and Worthy Friend, — You have no reason to put me 
among the rest of your forgetful friends, for I wrote two long letters to you, to 
which I never received one word of answer. The first was about your health ; 
the last I sent a great while ago, by one De la Mar. I can assure you with 
great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has a more warm heart 
towards you than myself. I am going out of this troublesome world, and you, 
among the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and gootl wishes. 

“ ‘ . . . I came out to this place so reduced by a dropsy and an asthma, 
that I could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move. I most earnestly desired 
and begged of God that He would take me. Contrary to my expectation, upon 
venturing to ride (which I had forborne for some years) I recovered my strength 
to a pretty considerable degree, slept, and had my stomach again. . . . What I 
did, I can assure you was not for life, but ease ; for I am at present in the case of 
a man that was almost in harbour, and then blown back to sea — who has a 
reasonable hope of going to a good place, and an absolute certainty of leaving a 
very bad one. Not that I have any particular disgust at the world ; for I have 
as great comfort in my own family and from the kindness of my friends as any 
man ; but the world, in the main, displeases me, and I have too true a presenti- 
ment of calamities that are to befall my country. However, if I should have the 
happiness to see you before I die, you will find that I enjoy the comforts of life 
with my usual cheerfulness. I cannot imagine why you are frightened from a 
journey to England ; the reasons you assign are not sufficient— the journey, I am 
sure, would do you good. In general, I recommend riding, of which I have 
always had a good opinion, and can now confirm it from my own experience. 

“ ‘ My family give you their love and service. The great loss I sustained 
in one of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I have with the rest to 
bring them to a right temper to bear the loss of a father who loves them, and 
whom they love, is really a most sensible affliction to me. I am afraid, my 


II 


550 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

wisest, wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind , Boling- 
broke, the Alcibiades of his age ; the generous Oxford ; the magnifi- 
cent, the witty, the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough : these 
were the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant 
company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. 
The favourite recreation of his leisure hours was the society of 
painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are letters 
between him and J ervas, whose pupil he loved to be Richardson, a 
celebrated artist of his time, and who painted for him a portrait of his 
old mother, and for whose picture he asked and thanked Richardson 
in one of the most delightful letters that ever were penned,*— and 

dear friend, we shall never see one another more in this world. I shall, to the 
last moment, preserve my love and esteem for you, being well assured you will 
never leave the paths of virtue and honour ; for all that is in this world is not 
worth the least deviation from the way. It will be great pleasure to me to hear 
from you sometimes ; for none are with more sincerity than I am, my dear 
friend, your most faithful friend and humble servant.’ ” 

“ Arbuthnot,” Johnson says, “ was a man of great comprehension, skilful in 
his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and 
able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination ; a 
scholar with great brilliance of wit ; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained 
and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal,” 

Dugald Stewart has testified to Arbuthnot’s ability in a department of which 
he was particularly qualified to judge; “Let me add, that, in the list of 
philosophical reformers, the authors of Martinus Scriblerus ought not to be 
overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the scholastic logic and metaphysics is 
universally known ; but few are aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed 
in their allusions to some of the most vulnerable passages in Locke’s Essay. 
In this part of the work it is commonly understood that Arbuthnot had the 
principal share.” — See Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopcedia Britannica, 
note to p. 242, and also note B. B. B. , p, 285. 

* To Mr. Richardson. 

“Twickenham, June 10, 1733. 

“ As I know you and I mutually desire to see one another, I hoped that 
this day our wishes would have met, and brought you hither. And this for the 
very reason, which possibly might hinder you coming, that my poor mother is 
dead. I thank God her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it 
cost her not a groan, or even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an 
expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to 
behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever paint- 
ing drew ; and it would be the greatest obligation which even that obliging art 
could ever bestow on a friend, if you could come and sketch it for me. I am 
sure, if there be no very prevalent obstacle, you will leave any common business 
to do this ; and I hope to see you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow 
morning as early, before this winter flower is faded. I will defer her inter- 
ment till to-morrow night. I know you love me, or I could not have written 
this — I could not (at this time) have written at all. Adieu ! May you die 
as happily ! . Yours, ' &c. 


551 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

the wonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted 
better than any artist of his day.* 

It is affecting to note, through Pope’s correspondence, the 
marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, 
and wittiest men of the time — generals and statesmen, philosophers 
and divines — all have a kind word and a kind thought for the good 
simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affectionately. Those 
men would have scarcely valued her, but that they knew how much 
he loved her, and that they pleased him by thinking of her. If his 
early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he 
speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an 
almost sacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, 
by a series of the most astonishing victories and dazzling achieve- 
ments, seized the crown of poetry, and the town was in an uproar 
of admiration, or hostility, for the young chief ; vdien Pope was 
issuing his famous decrees for the translation of the “ Iliad ” ; when 
Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and assailing him ; when 
Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening 
hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror ; when Pope, 
in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was struggling 
through the crowd of shouting friends and furious detractors to his 
temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, “My deare,” 
says she — “my deare, there’s Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead 
the same day that Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well ; but your 
brother is sick. My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. 
I hope to hear from you, and that you are well, which is my daily 
prayer; and this with my blessing.” The triumph marches by, and 
the car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred brilliant 
victories : the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at home and 
says, “I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you, my deare.” 

In our estimate of Pope’s character, let us always take into ac- 
count that constant tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded 
and sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction. f 

* ‘ ‘ Mr, Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a 
Guinea trader, came in, ‘ Nephew,’ said Sir Godfrey, ‘ you have the honour of 
seeing the two greatest men in the world,’ ‘ I don’t know how great you may 
be,’ said the Guinea man, ‘ but I don’t like your looks : I have often bought a 
man much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten 
guineas,’ ” — Dr. Warburton, Spence's Anecdotes. 
t Swift’s mention of him as one 

‘ ‘ whose filial piety excels 
Whatever Grecian story tells,” 

is well known. And a sneer of Walpole’s may be put to a better use than he 
ever intended it for, a propos of this subject. He charitably sneers, in one of 
his letters, at Spence’s “ fondling an old mother— in imitation of Pope ! ” 


552 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


It accompanied him always : liis life seems i)iirified by those 
artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received 
and deserved the fond attachment of the other members of his 
family. It is not a little touching to read in Spence of tlie 
enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister regarded him, 
and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates her love. “ I 
think no man was ever so little fond of money.” Mrs. Rackett 
says about her brother, “ I think my brother when he was young 
read more books than any man in the world ; ” and she falls to 
telling stories of his schooldays, and tlie manner in which his 
master at Twyford ill-used him. “ I don’t think my brother knew 
what fear was,” she continues ; and the accounts of Pope’s friends 
bear out this character for courage. When he had exasperated 
the dunces, and threats of violence and personal assault were 
brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instant 
allowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard 
in his daily walks except occasionally his faithful dog to bear 
him company. “ I had rather die at once,” said the gallant little 
cripple, “ than live in fear of those rascals.” 

As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and 
enjoyed for himself — a eutlianasia — a beautiful end. A perfect 
benevolence, affection, serenity hallowed the departure of that 
high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, and 
weaknesses of his delirium, there was something almost sacred. 
Spence describes him in his last days, looking up and with a rapt 
gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him. “ He said 
to me, ‘What’s thatU pointing into the air with a very steady 
regard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatest 
softness, ‘ ’Twas a vision ! ’ ” He laughed scarcely ever, but his 
companions describe his countenance as often illuminated by a 
peculiar sweet smile. 

“When,” said Spence,* the kind anecdotist whom Johnson 
despised — “when I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, 
on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying 
something kindly of his present or absent friends ; and that tliis 
was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity had outlasted 
understanding. Lord Bolingbroke said, ‘ It has so,’ and then added, 

* Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. He was a 
short time at Eton, and afterwards became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, 
a clergyman, and professor of poetry. He was a friend of Thomson’s, whose 
reputation he aided. He published an Essay on the Odyssey in 1726, which 
introduced him to Pope. Everybody liked him. His Anecdotes were placed, 
while still in MS., at the service of Johnson and also of Malone. They were 
published by Mr. Singer in 1820. 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 55S 

‘ I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart for his 
particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I 
have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that 

man’s love than ’ Here,” Spence says, “ St. John sunk his head 

and lost his voice in tears.” The sob which finishes the epitaph is 
finer than words. It is the cloak thrown over the father’s face in 
the famous Greek picture, which hides the grief and heightens it. 

In Johnson’s “Life of Pope” you will find described, with 
rather a malicious minuteness, some of the personal habits and 
infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he 
was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to 
place him on a level with other people at table.* He was sewed 
up in a buckram suit every morning, and required a nurse like a 
child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a strange 
acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the butt for many 
a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of 
him, says, “ If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope’s 
Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you 
have A. P. E.” Pope catalogues, at the end of the “Dunciad,” 
with a rueful precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which 
Dennis called him. That great critic pronounced Mr. Pope a little 
ass, a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, 
and so forth. It must be remembered that the pillory was a 
flourishing and popular institution in those .days. Authors stood 
in it in the body sometimes : and dragged their enemies thither 
morally, hooted them with foul abuse and assailed them with 
garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope’s figure was an easy one for 
those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw 
a hunchback and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was 
published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of 
rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull 
one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, 
it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of 
objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles the boorish 
wag ; and many of Pope’s revilers laughed not so much because 
they were wicked, as because they knew no better. 

* He speaks of Arbuthnot’s having helped him through “ that long disease, 
my life.” But not only was he so feeble as is implied in his use of the “ buck- 
ram,” but ‘‘it now appears,” says Mr. Peter Cunningham, ‘‘from his unpub- 
lished letters that, like Lord Hervey, he had recourse to ass’s milk for the 
preservation of his health.” It is to his lordship’s use of that simple beverage 
that he alludes when he says— 

“ Let Sporus tremble !— A. What, that thing of silk 
Sporus, that mere white-curd of ass’s milk?" 


li 


554 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the 
poet he was ; and through his life, however much he protested 
that he disregarded their abuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents 
stung and tore him. One of Cibber’s pamphlets coming into 
Pope’s hands, whilst Richardson the painter was with him, 
Pope turned round and said, “ These things are my diversions ; ” 
and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel, said; 
he saw his features “writhing with anguish.” How little human! 
nature changes ! Can’t one see that little figure 1 Can’t one i 
fancy one is reading Horace 1 Can’t one fancy one is speaking of j 
to-day ? ” 

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate ! 
the society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, 
caused him to shrink equally from that sliabby and boisterous crew 
which formed the rank and file of literature in his time : and he 
was as unjust to these men as they to him. The delicate little 
creature sickened at habits and company which were quite tolerable 
to robuster men : and in the famous feud between Pope and the 
Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one 
can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each other. 
As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope’s triumph 
passed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously 
down on it from their balcony ; so it was natural for Dennis and 
Tibbald, and Welsted and Cibber, and the worn and hungry press- 
men in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And 
Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was to 
Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful ; he 
fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he 
slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the “ Dunciad ” and 
the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the 
ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folk on whom 
he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who 
established among us the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base 
descriptions of poor men’s want; he gloats over poor Dennis’s 
garret, and flannel nightcap and red stockings ; he gives instruc- 
tions how to find Curll’s authors — the historian at the tallow- 
chandler’s under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators 
in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose 
landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, 
more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. 
It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen ; 
at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made 
Addison a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and Steele a Com- 
missioner, and Swift all but a Bishop. The profession of letters 


555 


PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE 

was nimed by that libel of the “Dimciad.”* If authors were 
wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in haylofts, of 
which their landladies kept the ladders, at least nobody came to 
disturb them in their straw ; if three of them had but one coat 
between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, 
at any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house and paid his two- 
pence like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all 
this poverty and meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and 
rags to public ridicule. It was Pope that has made generations of 
the reading world (delighted with the mischief, as who would not 
be that reads it '?) believe that author and wretch, author and rags, 
author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowheel, tripe, poverty, 
duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous landladies, were 
always associated together. The condition of authorship began to 
fall from the days of the “Dunciad” : and I believe in my heart 
that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was 
occasioned by Pope’s libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those. 
Everybody was familiarised with the idea of the poor devil, the 
author. The manner is so captivating that young authors practise 
it, and begin their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and 
so pleasant to read ! to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, 
perhaps ; and fancy one’s self his conqueror. It is easy to shoot — 
but not as Pope did. The shafts of his satire rise sublimely : no 
poet’s verse ever mounted higher than that wonderful flight with 
which the “ Dunciad ” concludes : — f 

% 

“ She comes, she comes ! the sable throne behold 
Of Night primeval and of Chaos old ; 

Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay. 

And all its varying rainbows die away ; 

Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires. 

The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 

As, one by one, at dread Medea’s strain 
The sick’ning stars fade off the ethereal plain ; 

As Argus’ eyes, by Hermes’ wand oppress’d. 

Closed, one by one, to everlasting rest ; — 

Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, 

Art after Art goes out, and all is night. 


* [This statement would require qualification. The Grub Street author was 
probably worse off in the time of Queen Anne than in the time of George II., 
and the “ Dunciad” really showed that he could make himself more effectually 
unpleasant to his superiors. The prizes of Queen Anne’s time did not go to the 
professional author, but to the authors who were in a good enough position 
to be on friendly terms with ministers.] 

t “ He (Johnson) repeats to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the con- 
cluding lines of the ‘ Dunciad.’ ” — Boswell. 


556 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, 

Mountains of casuistry heaped o’er her head ; 

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, 

Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. 

Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires. 

And, unawares. Morality expires. 

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine. 

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. 

Lo ! thy dread empire. Chaos, is restored. 

Light dies before thy uncreating word ; 

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall. 

And universal darkness buries all.” * 

In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very 
greatest height which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself 
the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest ardour, the 
loftiest assertion of truth, the most generous wisdom illustrated by 
the noblest poetic figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, 
and most harmonious. It is heroic courage speaking : a splendid 
declaration of righteous wrath and war. It is the gage flung down, 
and the silver trumpet ringing defiance to falsehood and tyranny, 
deceit, dulness, superstition. It is Truth, the champion, shining 
and intrepid, and fronting the great world-tyrant with armies of 
slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, 
in that great battle which has always been waging since society 
began. 

In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to 
show what it actually is, for that were vain ; but what it is like, 
and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him who views 
it. And in considering Pope’s admirable career, I am forced into 
similitudes drawn from other courage and greatness, and into com- 
paring him ^v^ith those who achieved triumphs in actual war. I 
think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of young 
Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find 
frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of the 
meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great 
soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the 
splendour of Pope’s young victories, of his merit, unequalled as 
his renown, I hail and salute the achieving genius, and do homage 
to the pen of a hero. 

* “ Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the autho- 
rity of Spence), that Pope himself admired these lines so much that when he 
repeated them his voice faltered, ' And well it might, sir,’ said Johnson, ‘ for 
they are noble lines.’ " — J. Boswell, junior. 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FLELDING 


1 SUPPOSE, as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting 
their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and 
gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl 
who finds a champion ; bravery and virtue conquer beauty ; and 
vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, 
is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes 
him and honest folk come by their own. There never was perhaps 
a greatly popular story but this simple plot was carried through it : 
mere satiric wit is addressed to a class of readers and thinkers quite 
difterent to those simple souls who laugh and weep over the novel, 
I fancy very few ladies, indeed, for instance, could be brought to 
like “ Gulliver ” heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference 
of manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of 
“ Jonathan Wild,” In that strange apologue, the author takes for 
a hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that 
his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could< enable him 
to devise or depict ; he accompanies this villain through all the 
actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a wonderful mock 
respect ; and doesn’t leave him till he is dangling at the gallows, 
when the satirist makes him a low bow and wishes the scoundrel 
good-day. 

It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that 
Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his reputation.* 
His art is quite simple ; t he speaks popular parables to interest 

* Coleridge speaks of the “beautiful female faces” in Hogarth’s pictures, 
“ in whom,” he says, “the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which 
belonged to him as a poet.”— 7"^^ Friend. 

+ “I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who, being asked which 
book he esteemed most in his library, answered ‘ Shakspeare ’ ; being asked 
which he esteemed next best, replied ‘Hogarth.’ His graphic representations 
are indeed books : they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. 
Other pictures we look at— his prints we read, . . . 

“The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would 
almost unvulgarise every subject which he might choose. ... 

“ I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily 


i 


558 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


simple hearts, and to inspire them with pleasure or pity or warning 
and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easy as “ Goody Two- 
Shoes ” ; it is the moral of Tommy was a naughty boy and the 
master flogged him, and Jacky was a good boy and had plum -cake, 
which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous English 
moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters 
after the fable, we must remember how simple the scholars and 
schoolmaster both were, and like neither the less because they are 
so artless and honest. “ It was a maxim of Doctor Harrison’s,” 
Fielding says, in “ Amelia,” — speaking of the benevolent divine and 

something in them to make us like them ; some are indifferent to us, some in 
their nature repulsive, and only made interesting by the wonderful skill and 
truth to nature in the painter ; but I contend that there is in most of them 
that sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy water, chases away and 
disperses the contagion of the bad. They have this in them, besides, that they 
bring us acquainted with the every-day human face, — they give us skill to 
detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which escape the careless or 
fastidious observer) in the circumstances of the world about us ; and prevent 
that disgust at common life, that tcedium quotidianarum formarum, which an 
unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In 
this, as in many other things, they are analogous to the best novels of Smollett 
and Fielding.” — Charles Lamb. 

“It has been observed that Hogarth’s pictures are exceedingly unlike any 
other representations of the same kind of subjects — that they form a class, and 
have a character peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in 
what this general distinction consists. 

“In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures; and 
if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of Tom Jones ought to be re- 
garded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular development of 
fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in 
like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than 
many which have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When 
we say that Hogarth treated his subjects historically, we mean that his works 
represent the manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters 
by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has life and motion in it. 
Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature and 
muscle is put into full play ; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, 
and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the 
canvas for ever. The expression is always taken en passant, in a state of 
progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. . . , His figures are 
not like the background on which they are painted : even the pictures on the 
wall have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and 
scope of history, Hogarth’s heads have all the reality and correctness of por- 
traits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them 
with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his com- 
positions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote f om 
caricature, and from mere still life. . . . His faces go to the very verge of 
caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it.” — 
Hazlitt, 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 559 

philosopher who represents the good principle in that novel — “ that 
no man can descend below himself, in doing any act which may 
contribute to protect an innocent person, or to bring a rogue to the 
galloivsJ’^ The moralists of that age had no compunction, you see ; 
they had not begun to be sceptical about the theory of punishment, 
and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edifica- 
tion. Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, 
to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as un- 
doubting subscribers to this moral law, that Fielding wrote and 
Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where, in the mad- 
house scene in the “ Rake’s Progress,” the girl whom he has ruined 
is represented as still tending and weeping over him in his insanity, 
a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest 
Hogarth’s mind. There’s not the slightest doubt in the breast of 
the jolly Draco. 

The famous set of pictures called “ Marriage k la Mode,” and 
which are now exhibited in the National Gallery in London, con- 
tains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth 
comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds 
of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill 
of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the 
negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a 
rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, 
the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. Pride and pomposity 
appear in every accessory surrounding the Earl. He sits in gold 
lace and velvet — as how should such an Earl wear anything but 
velvet and gold lace 1 His coronet is everywhere : on his footstool, 
on which reposes one gouty toe turned out ; on the sconces and 
looking-glasses ; on the dogs ; * on his lordship’s very crutches ; 
on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him ; 
under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which 
shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Con- 
queror, and confronting the old Alderman from the City, who has 
mounted his sword for the occasion, and wears his Alderman’s 
chain, and has brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds and 
thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pend- 
ing between them. Whilst the steward f (a Methodist — therefore 
a hypocrite and cheat : for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a 
Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit 
together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance 

* [There is no coronet on* the dogs in the picture. A coronet was conferred 
upon one dog in the engraving.] 

f [This person is the Alderman’s clerk or cashier. The Methodist steward 
(a different person) appears in the next picture— the breakfast scene.] 


560 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


in the glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her 
pocket-handkerchief, and listening with rueful countenance to Coun- 
sellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The 
girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has 
taken care to give her a likeness to her father; as in the young 
Viscount’s face you see a resemblance to the Earl his noble sire. 
The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed 
to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are 
sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. 
A martyr is led to the fire ; Andromeda * is offered to sacrifice ; 
Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the 
house (in the picture it is the Earl himself as a young man), with 
a comet over his head, indicating that the career of the family is 
to be brilliant and brief. In the second j)icture f the old lord must 
be dead, for Madam has now the Countess’s coronet over her bed 
and toilet-glass, and sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor 
Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, 
whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evi- 
dently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. 
My Lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he 
returns jaded and tipsy from the “ Rose,” to find his wife yawning 
in her drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight stream- 
ing in ; or he amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, 
whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or wastes 
her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amusement at mas- 
(pierades. The dismal end is known. My Lord draws upon the 
counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavouring 
to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the Alderman in the 
City, and faints | upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue’s dying 
speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for 
sending his Lordship out of the world. Moral : — Don’t listen to 
evil silver-tongued counsellors : don’t marry a man for his rank, 
or a woman for her money : don’t frequent foolish auctions and 
masquerade balls unknown to your husband : don’t have wicked 
companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be 
run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and 
Tyburn. The people are all naughty, and Bogey carries them all 
off. In the “ Rake’s Progress,” a loose life is ended by a similar 
sad catastrophe. It is the spendthrift coming into possession of 
the wealth of the paternal miser ; the prodigal surrounded by 

* [This is a mistake. The only person likely to be intended is St. Sebastian. 
Any reference to the incidents is very doubtful.] 

t [Really the fourth.] 

X [She has taken laudanum and is dead.] 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 56l 

flatterers, and wasting his substance on the very worst company; 
the bailiffs, the gambling-house, and Bedlam for an end. In the 
famous story of “ Industry and Idleness,” the moral is pointed in 
a manner similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at 
his work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank 
reads the edifying ballads of “ Whittington ” and the “ London 
’Prentice,” whilst that reprobate Tom Idle prefers “Moll Flanders,” 
and drinks hugely of beer. Frank goes to church of a Sunday, 
and warbles hymns from the gallery ; while Tom lies on a tombstone 
outside playing at “ halfpenny-under- the-hat ” with street black- 
guards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle. Frank is made 
overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is 
taken into partnership and marries his master’s daughter, sends 
out broken victuals to the poor, and listens in his nightcap and 
gown, with the lovely Mrs. Goodchild by his side, to the nuptial 
music of the City bands and the marrow-bones and cleavers ; whilst 
idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in a garret lest the officers 
are coming to take him for picking pockets. The Worshipful 
Francis Goodchild, Esquire, becomes Sheriff of London, and partakes 
of the most splendid dinners which money can purchase or Alderman 
devour ; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with that 
one-eyed and disreputable accomplice who first taught him to play 
chuck-farthing on a Sunday. What happens next ? Tom is brought 
up before the justice of his country, in the person of Mr. Alderman 
Goodchild, who weeps as he recognises his old brother ’prentice, as 
Tom’s one-eyed friend peaches on him, and the clerk makes out 
the poor rogue’s ticket for Newgate. Then the end comes. Tom 
goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it ; whilst the Right 
Honourable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds 
to his Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a 
sword-bearer, whilst the Companies of London march in the august 
procession, whilst the trainbands of the City fire their pieces and 
get drunk in his honour ; and — 0 crowning delight and glory of all 
— whilst his Majesty the King * looks out from his royal balcony, 
with his riband on his breast, and his Queen and his star by his 
side, at the corner house of Saint Paul’s Churchyard. 

How the times have changed ! The new Post Office now not 
disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the 
picture, where the tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, 
with his wig over one eye, and the ’prentice-boy is trying to kiss 
the pretty girl in the gallery. Passed away ’prentice-boy and 
pretty girl ! Passed away tipsy trainband-man with wig and 
bandolier ! On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom I have an 
* [Really Frederick, Prince of Wales, with the Princess of Wales.] 


562 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


•unaffected pity) made his exit from this wicked world, and wlicre 
you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet 
and views the hills of Harrow or Hampstead beyond, a splendid 
marble arch, a vast and modern city — clean, airy, painted drab, 
populous with nursery-maids and children, the abode of wealth and 
comfort — the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the 
most respectable district in the habitable globe. 

In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the 
apotheosis of the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a 
ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple, kindly 
piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to contain an account 
of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle executed at Tyburn. 
Could Tom’s ghost have made its appearance in 1847, and not in 
1747, what changes would have been remarked by that astonished 
escaped criminal ! Over that road which the hangman used to 
travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten 
thousand carriages every day : over yonder road, by which Dick 
Turpin fled to Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, 
when he came to take up his quarters at the “ Hercules Pillars ” 
on the outskirts of London, what a rush of civilisation and order 
flows now ! What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to 
banks, and chambers, and counting-houses ! What regiments of 
nursery-maids and pretty infantry ; what peaceful processions of 
policeman, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what 
swarms of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, 
pass daily and hourly ! Tom Idle’s times are quite changed : many 
of the institutions gone into disuse which were admired in his day. 
There’s more pity and kindness and a better chance for poor Tom’s 
successors now than at that simpler period when Fielding hanged 
him and Hogarth drew him’. 

To the student of history, these admirable works must be in- 
valuable, as they give us the most complete and truthful picture of 
the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past century. We 
look, and see pass before us the England of a hundred years ago — 
the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, 
foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber filled with gew- 
gaws in the mode of that day ; the church, with its quaint florid 
architecture and singing congregation ; the parson with his great 
wig, and the beadle with his cane : all these are represented before 
us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how 
the Lord Mayor dines in state ; how the prodigal drinks and sports 
at the bagnio ; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell ; how 
the thief divides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, 
and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 563 

upon the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits 
of the bygone generation : we see one of Walpole’s Members of 
Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating 
the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender ; we see the 
grenadiers and trainbands of the City marching out to meet the 
enemy ; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and “ White 
Hanoverian Horse ” embroidered on the cap, the very figures of 
the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at 
Culloden. The Yorkshire waggon rolls into the inn yard ; the 
country parson, in his jack-boots, and his bands and short cassock, 
comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Parson Adams, with 
his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury fly sets forth from the 
old “ Angel ” — you see the passengers entering the great heavy 
vehicle, up the wooden steps, their hats tied down with hand- 
kerchiefs over their faces, and under their arms, sword, hanger, 
and case-bottle ; the landlady— apoplectic with the liquors in her 
own bar — is tugging at the bell ; the hunchbacked postillion — he 
may have ridden the leaders to Humphrey Clinker — is begging 
a gratuity ; the miser is grumbling at the bill ; Jack of the 
“ Centurion ” lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle, with a soldier 
by his side * — it may be Smollett’s Jack Hatchway — it has a like- 
ness to Lismahago. You see the surburban fair and the strolling 
company of actors ; the pretty milkmaid singing under the windows 
of the enraged French musician : it is such a girl as Steele charm- 
ingly described in the Guardian, a few years before this date,! 
singing, under Mr. Ironside’s window in Shire Lane, her pleasant 
carol of a May morning. You see noblemen and blacklegs bawling 
and betting in the Cockpit : you see Garrick as he was arrayed in 
“ King Richard ” ; Macheath and Polly in the dresses which they 
wore when they charmed our ancestors, and when noblemen in 
blue ribands sat on the stage and listened to their delightful 
music. You see the ragged French soldiery, in their white coats 
and cockades, at Calais Gate : they are of the regiment, very 
likely, which friend Roderick Random joined before he was rescued 
by his preserver Monsieur de Strap, with whom he fought on the 
famous day of Dettingen. You see the judges on the bench ; the 
audience laughing in the pit ; the student in the Oxford theatre ; 
the citizen on his country walk; you see Broughton the boxer, 
Sarah Malcolm the murderess, Simon Lovat the traitor, John 
Wilkes the demagogue, leering at you with that squint which has 
become historical, and that face which, ugly as it was, he said he 
could make as captivating to woman as the countenance of the 

* [The commentators say that the soldier is a Frenchman.] 

t [The Guardian ended in 1713. The “ enraged musician ” is dated 1741.] 


i 


564 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


handsomest beau in town. All these sights and people are with 
you. After looking in the “ Rake’s Progress ” at Hogarth’s picture 
of Saint James’s Palace Gate, you may people the street, but little 
altered within these hundred years, with the gilded carriages and 
thronging chairmen that bore the courtiers your ancestors to Queen 
Caroline’s drawing-room more than a hundred years ago. 

What manner of man * was he who executed these portraits 


* Hogarth (whose family name was Hogart) was the grandson of a West- 
moreland yeoman. His father came to London, and was an author and 
schoolmaster. William was born loth November 1697, in the parish of Saint 
Martin, Ludgate. He was early apprenticed to an engraver of arms on 
plate. The following touches are from his Anecdotes of Himself (Edition 
of 1833) 

“ As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all 
sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant ; and mimicry, common to 
all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter 
drew my attention from play ; and I was, at every possible opportunity, em- 
ployed in making drawings. 1 picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, 
and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises, 
when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, 
than for the exercise itself. In the former, I soon found that blockheads with 
better memories could much surpass me ; but for the latter I was particularly 
distinguished. . . . 

“ I thought it still more unlikely that by pursuing the common method, and 
copying old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new designs, 
which was my first and greatest ambition. I therefore endeavoured to habituate 
myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory ; and by repeating in my 
own mind the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees com- 
bine and put them down with my pencil. Thus, with all the drawbacks which 
resulted from the circumstances I have mentioned, I had one material advantage 
over my competitors, viz., the early habit I thus acquired of retaining in my 
mind’s eye, without coldly copying it on the spot, whatever I intended to 
imitate. 

“The instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify 
myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment ; and 
frontispieces to books, such as prints to Hudibras, in twelves, &c. , soon brought 
me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father had left 
them . . . which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here again 
I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and destructive 
to the ingenious ; for the first plate I published, called ‘ The Taste of the Town,’ 
in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, 
than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the 
original prints were returned to me again, and I was thus obliged to sell the 
plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of 
sale but at their shops. Owing to this, and other circumstances, by engraving, 
until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself; but even 
then 1 was a punctual paymaster. 

“ I then married, and ” 

[But William is going too fast here. He made a “stolen union,” on 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 565 

— so various, so faithful, and so admirable'? In the National 
Collection of Pictures most of us have seen the best and most care- 
fully finished series of his comic paintings, and the portrait of his 
own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes shine out from the 

March 23, 1729, with Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, serjeant-painter. 
For some time Sir James kept his heart and his purse-strings close, but “soon 
after became both reconciled and generous to the young couple.” — Hogarth's 
Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. p. 44.] 

“ — commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from twelve to fifteen 
inches high. This, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years." 

[About this time Hogarth had summer lodgings at South Lambeth, and did 
all kinds of work, “embellishing” the “Spring Gardens” at “ Vauxhall,” and 
the like. In 1731 he published a satirical plate against Pope, founded on the 
well-known imputation against him of his having satirised the Duke of Chandos, 
under the name of Timon, in his poem on “Taste.” The plate represented 
a view of Burlington House, with Pope whitewashing it, and bespattering the 
Duke of Chandos’s coach. Pope made no retort, and has never mentioned 
Hogarth.] 

“ Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk, I enter- 
tained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call The Great 
Style of History Painting ; so that without having had a stroke of this grand 
business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with 
a smile at my own temerity, commenced history-painter, and on a great stair- 
case at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, painted two Scripture stories, the ‘ Pool 
of Bethesda’ and the ‘Good Samaritan,’ with figures seven feet high. . . . 
But as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it 
in England, I was unwilling to sink into a p 07 'trait manufacturer ; and, still 
ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations of advantage from that 
source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at 
large. 

“As to portrait-painting, the chief branch of the art by which a painter can 
procure himself a tolerable livelihood, and the only one by which a lover of 
money can get a fortune, a man of very moderate talents may have great success 
in it, as the artifice and address of a mercer is infinitely more useful than the 
abilities of a painter. By the manner in which the present race of professors 
in England conduct it, that also becomes still life.” 

“ By this inundation of folly and puff” {he has been speaking of the success of 
Vanloo, who came over here in 1737), “I must confess I was much disgusted, 
and determined to try if by any means I could stem the torrent, and, by opposing, 
end it. I laughed at the pretensions of these quacks in colouring, ridiculed 
their productions as feeble and contemptible, and asserted that it required 
neither taste nor talents to excel their most popular performances. This inter- 
ference excited much enmity, becau.se, as my opponents told me, my studies 
were in another way. ‘You talk,’ added they, ‘with ineffable contempt of 
portrait-painting ; if it is so easy a task, why do not you convince the world by 
painting a portrait yourself?’ Provoked at this language, I, one day at the 
Academy in St. Martin’s Lane, put the following question : ‘ Supposing any 
man, at this time, were to paint a portrait as well as Vandyke, would it be 


566 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look with which 
William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a 
hero ; you see him before you, and can fancy what he was — a jovial, 
honest London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearty, plain-spoken 


seen or acknowledged, and could the artist enjoy the benefit or acquire the 
reputation due to his performance ? ’ 

“They asked me in reply, if I could paint one as well; and I frankly 
answered, I believed I could. . . . 

“Of the mighty talents said to be requisite for portrait painting I had not 
the most exalted opinion.” 

Let us now hear him on the question of the Academy : — 

“To pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty 
students drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as must be acknowledged, 
foolish enough ; but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who 
have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their 
brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries, as in France, for telling a 
lad when a leg or an arm is too long or too short. . . . 

“France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn 
assumed a foppish kind of splendour sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the neigh- 
bouring states, and draw vast sums of money from this country. . . . 

“To return to our Royal Academy: I am told that one of their leading 
objects will be, sending young men abroad to study the antique statues, for 
such kind of studies may sometimes improve an exalted genius, but they will 
not create it ; and whatever has been the cause, this same travelling to Italy 
has, in several instances that I have seen, seduced the student from nature and 
led him to paint marble figures, in which he has availed himself of the great 
works of antiquity, as a coward does when he puts on the armour of an 
Alexander ; for, with similar pretensions and similar vanity, the painter supposes 
he shall be adored as a second Raphael Urbino. ” 

We must now hear him on his “ Sigismunda” : — 

“As the most violent and virulent abuse thrown on ‘Sigismunda’ was 
from a set of miscreants, with whom I am proud of having been ever at war 
I mean the expounders of the mysteries of old pictures — I have been some- 
times told they were beneath my notice. This is true of them individually ; 
but as they have access to people of rank, who seem as happy in being cheated 
as these merchants are in cheating them, they have a power of doing much 
mischief to a modern artist. However mean the vendor of poisons, the mineral 
is destructive : to me its operation was troublesome enough. ' 111 nature 

spreads so fast that now was the time for every little dog in the profession 
to bark ! ” 

Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes and 
Churchill. 

“The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timed tkin^, 
to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew forth my 
print of ‘The Times,’ a subject which tended to the restoration of peace and 
unanimity, and put the opposers of these humane objects in a light which gave 
great offence to those who were trying to foment disaffection in the minds of 
the populace. One of the most notorious of them, till now my friend and 
flatterer, attacked me in the North Briton, in so infamous and malign a style, 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 567 

man,* loving his laugh, his friend, liis glass, his roast beef of Old 
England, and having a proper houi'geois scorn for French frogs, for 
mounseers, and wooden shoes in general, for foreign fiddlers, foreign 
singers, and, above all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the 
most amusing contempt. 

It must have been great fun to hear him rage against Correggio 
and the Caracci j to watch him thump the table and snap his 
fingers, and say, “ Historical painters be hanged ! here’s the man 
that will paint against any of them for a hundred pounds. Cor- 
reggio’s ‘ Sigismunda ’ ! Look at Bill Hogarth’s ‘ Sigismunda ’ ; 
look at my altar-piece at Saint Mary Redclifie, Bristol ; look at my 

that he himself, when pushed even by his best friends, was driven to so poor 
an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote it. . . . 

" This renowned patriot’s portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and 
marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The 
ridiculous was apparent to every eye ! A Brutus ! A saviour of his country 
with such an aspect — was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to 
much laughter in the lookers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the 
bone. . . . 

“Churchill, Wilkes’s toad-echo, put the North Briton attack into verse, in 
an Epistle to Hogarth ; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little 
poetical heightening, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. . . . 
However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready, such as the 
background and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much 
work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master 
Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pecuniary advantage 
which I derived from these two engravings, together with occksionally riding 
on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time 
of life.” 

* “ It happened in the early part of Hogarth’s life, that a nobleman who 
was uncommonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. It was 
executed with a skill that did honour to the artist’s abilities ; but the likeness 
was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to compliment or 
flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of himself, never once thought 
of paying for a reflection that would only disgust him with his deformities. 
Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money ; but 
afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a 
banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon 
an expedient. ... It was couched in the following card : — 

“ ‘ Mr. Hogarth’s dutiful respects to Lord — — . Finding that he does not 
mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. 
Hogarth’s necessity for the money. If, therefore, his Lordship does not send 
for it, in three days it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some 
other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man : Mr. Hogarth 
having given that gentleman a conditional promise of it, for an exhibition- 
picture, on his Lordship’s refusal.’ 

“This intimation had the desired effect.” — Works, by Nichols and 
Steevens, vol. i. p. 25. 


568 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

‘ Paul before Felix/ and see whether I’m not as good as the best 
of them.” * 

Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth’s opinion 
about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see 
the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has 
not shared the Dean’s contempt for Handel ; the world has dis- 
covered a difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given 
a hearty applause and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly 
as a painter of scriptural subjects, or as a rival of Correggio. It 
does not take away from one’s liking for the man, or from the 
moral of his story, or the humour of it — from one’s admiration for 
the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he per- 
sisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy 
against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and 
that a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run 
his genius down. They say it was Liston’s firm belief, that he was 
a great and neglected tragic actor ; they say that every one of us 
believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he 
is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of the 
“ miscreants,” Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him in the 
North Briton ; the other was Churchill, who put the North Briton 
attack into heroic verse, and published his “Epistle to Hogarth.” 
Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot 
still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a 
caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with 
a staff’, on which lie the first, lie the second — lie the tenth, are 
engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake 
about honest Hogarth’s satire : if he has to paint a man with his 
throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off ; and he tried to 


* ‘ ‘ Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favour of 
‘Sigismunda’ might have commanded a proof-print or forced an original print 
out of our artist’s hands. . . . 

“The following authenticated story of our artist (furnished by the late Mr. 
Belchier, F.R.S. , a surgeon of eminence) will also serve to show how much 
more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others, 
than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with the great 
Cheselden and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon of 
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, a few evenings before at Dick’s Coffee-house, had 
asserted that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. ‘ That fellow 
Freke,’ replied Hogarth, ‘ is always shooting his bolt absurdly, one way or 
another. Handel is a giant in music ; Greene only a light Florimel kind of a 
composer.’ ‘ Ay,’ says our artist’s informant, ‘but at the same time Mr. Freke 
declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyke.’ ‘ There he was 

right,’ adds Hogarth, ‘ and so, by G , I am, give me my time and let me 

choose my subject.’" — Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. pp. 236, 237. 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 569 

do the same for his enemies in this little controversy. “ Having an 
old plate by me,” says he, “ with some parts ready, such as the 
background, and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so 
much work laid aside to some account, and so patched uj) a print 
of Master Churchill, in the character of a bear ; the pleasure and 
pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, 
together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as 
much health as I (^an expect at my time of life.” 

And so he concludes his queer little book of Anecdotes : “I 
liave gone through the circumstances of a life which till lately 
passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no 
respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely assert, 
that I have done my best to make those about me tolerably happy, 
and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury. 
What may follow, God knows.” * 

A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth 
and four friends of his, who set out like the redoubted Mr. Pickwick 
and his companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes ; 
and made an excursion to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness, and 
adjacent places.! One of the gentlemen noted down the proceed- 
ings of the journey, for which Hogarth and a brother artist made 
drawings. The book is chiefly curious at this moment from showing 
the citizen life of those days, and the rough jolly style of merriment, 
not of the five companions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows 
of their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the “ Bedford 
Arms,” Covent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, 
exchanging compliments with the bargemen as they went down 
the river. At Billingsgate Hogarth made a “ caracatura ” of a 
facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably 
entertained the party with the humours of the place. Hence they 
took a Gravesend boat for themselves ; had straw to lie upon, and 
a tilt over their heads, they say, and went down the river at night, 
sleeping and singing jolly choruses. 

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces 
and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth 
for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At 

* Of Hogarth’s kindliness of disposition, the story of his rescue of the 
drummer-girl from the ruffian at Southwark Fair is an illustration ; and in this 
case virtue was not its own reward, since her pretty face afterwards served him 
for a model in many a picture. 

t He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thornhill (son 
of Sir James), Scott the landscape-painter, Tothall, and Forrest. [The account 
was first published in 1782, and is in the third volume of the "Genuine 
Works,” 1817.] 


570 


ENGLISPI HUMOURISTS 


one o’clock they went to dinner with excellent port, and a quantity 
more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hoi)scotch 
in the town hall. It would appear that they slept most of them 
in one room, and the chronicler of the party describes them all as 
waking at seven o’clock, and telling each other their dreams. You 
have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this holiday 
excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank 
to a boat at Gravesend ; the whole company are represented in one 
design, in a fisherman’s room, where they had all passed the night. 
One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself ; another is being 
shaved by the fisherman ; a third, with a handkerchief over his 
bald pate, is taking his breakfast ; and Hogarth is sketching the 
whole scene. 

They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, 
drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, 
all singing merrily. 

It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks. These 
were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, 
of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave 
London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.* 

* Doctor Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth, 
which were equally true and pleasing ; I know not why Garrick’s were preferred 
to them ; — 

“ ‘ The hand of him here torpid lies, 

That drew th’ essential forms of grace ; 

Here, closed in death, th’ attentive eyes, 

'I’hat saw the manners in the face.’ ” 

[Johnson’s lines were only a suggested emendation upon the first form of the 
verses, submitted to him by Garrick for criticism. — Boswell’s Johnson (Birk- 
beck Hill), i. 187.] 

"Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me w'hen I was 
too young to have a proper sense of them, was used to be very earnest that 
I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible the friendship, of Doctor 
Johnson ; whose conversation was, to the talk of other men, like Titian’s painting 
compared to Hudson’s, he said : ‘but don’t you tell people now that I say so,’ 
continued he, ‘ for the connoisseurs and I are at war, you know ; and because I 
hate them, they think I hate Titian— let them !’ ... Of Dr. Johnson, when 
my father and he were talking about him one day, ‘ That man,’ says Hogarth, 

‘ is not contented with believing the Bible ; but he fairly resolves, I think, to 
believe nothing but the Bible, Johnson,’ added he, ‘ though so wise a fellow, is 
more like King David than King Solomon, for he says in his haste. All men are 
liars.'" — Mrs. Piozzi. 

Hogarth died on the 26th of October 1764. The day before his death, he 
was removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, "in a very weak 
condition, yet remarkably cheerful.” He had just received an agreeable letter 
from Franklin, He lies buried at Chiswick, 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 571 

Of Smollett’s associates and manner of life the author of the 
admirable “ Humphrey Clinker ” has given us an interesting account 
in that most amusing of novels.* 


* To Sir Watkin Phillips, Bart. , of Jesus College, Oxon, 

Dear Phillips, In my last, I mentioned my having spent an evening 
with a society of authors, who seemed to be jealous and afraid of one another. 
My uncle was not at all surprised to hear me say I was disappointed in their 
conversation. ‘ A man may be very entertaining and instructive upon paper,’ 
said he, and exceedingly dull in common discourse. I have observed, that 
those who shine most in private company are but secondary stars in the con- 
stellation of genius. A small stock of ideas is more easily managed, and sooner 
displayed, than a great quantity crowded together. There is very seldom any- 
thing extraordinary in the appearance and address of a good writer ; whereas a 
dull author generally distinguishes himself by some oddity or extravagance. For 
this reason I fancy that an assembly of grubs must be very diverting. ’ 

“My curiosity being excited by this hint, I consulted my friend Dick Ivy, 
who undertook to gratify it the very next day, which was Sunday last. He 

carried me to dine with S , whom you and I have long known by his 

writings. He lives in the skirts of the town ; and every Sunday his house is 
open to all unfortunate brothers of the quill, whom he treats with beef, pudding, 
and potatoes, port, punch, and Calvert’s entire butt beer. He has fi.xed upon 
the first day of the week for the exercise of his hospitality, because some of his 
guests could not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not explain. I 
was civilly received in a plain, yet decent habitation, which opened backwards 
into a very pleasant garden, kept in excellent order ; and, indeed, I saw none of 
the outward signs of authorship either in the house or the landlord, who is 
one of those few writers of the age that stand upon their own foundation, 
without patronage, and above dependence. If there was notching charac- 
teristic in the entertainer, the company made ample amends for his want of 
singularity. 

“At two in the afternoon, I found myself one, of ten messmates seated at 
table ; and I question if the whole kingdom could produce such another assem- 
blage of originals. Among their peculiarities, I do not mention those of dress, 
which may be purely accidental. What struck me were oddities originally pro- 
duced by affectation, and afterwards confirmed by habit. One of them wore 
spectacles at dinner, and another his hat flapped ; though (as Ivy told me) the 
first was noted for having a seaman’s eye when a bailiff was in the wind ; and 
the other was never known to labour under any weakness or defect of vision, 
except about five years ago, when he was complimented with a couple of black 
eyes by a player, with whom he had quarrelled in his drink. A third wore a 
laced stocking, and made use of crutches, because, once in his life, he had been 
laid up with a broken leg, though no man could leap over a stick with more 
agility. A fourth had contracted such an antipathy to the country, that he 
insisted upon sitting with his back towards the window that looked into the 
garden ; and when a dish of cauliflower was set upon the table, he snuffed up 
volatile salts to keep him from fainting ; yet this delicate person was the son of 
a cottager, born under a hedge, and had many years run wild among asses on a 
common. A fifth affected distraction : when spoke to, he always answered from 
the purpose. Sometimes he suddenly started up, and rapped out a dreadful 


f 


572 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

I have no doubt that this picture by Smollett is as faithful a 
one as any from the pencil of his kindred humourist, Hogarth. 

We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias 
Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible; worn and 
battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle 
against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a hundred 
different schemes; he had been reviewer and historian, critic, 
medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought endless literary 

oath ; sometimes he burst out a laughing ; then he folded his arms, and sighed ; 
and then he hissed like fifty serpents. 

" At first, I really thought he was mad ; and, as he sat near me, began to 
be under some apprehensions for my own safety ; when our landlord, perceiving 
me alarmed, assured me aloud that I had nothing to fear. ' The gentleman,’ 
said he, ‘is trying to act a part for which he is by no means qualified ; if he had 
all the inclination in the world, it is not in his power to be mad ; his spirits 
are too flat to be kindled into phrenzy.’ ‘ ’Tis no bad p-p-puff, how-owever,” 
observed a person in a tarnished laced coat : ‘ aff-ffected m-madness w-ill p-pass 
for w-wit w-with nine-nineteen out of t-twenty.’ 'And affected stuttering for 
humour,’ replied our landlord ; ‘ though, God knows ! there is no affinity between 
them.’ It seems this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain 
speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted 
the laugh of the company, without the least expense of genius ; and that imper- 
fection, which he had at first counterfeited, was now become so h;ibitual, that 
he could not lay it aside. 

“ A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at dinner, had, on his 

first introduction, taken such offence at S , because he looked and talked, 

and ate and drank, like any other man, that he spoke contemptuously of his 
understanding ever after, and never would repeat his visit, until he had exhibited 
the following proof of his caprice. Wat Wyvil, the poet, having made some 

unsuccessful advances towards an intimacy with S , at last gave him to 

understand, by a third person, that he had written a poem in his praise, 
and a satire against his person : that if he would admit him to his house, 
the first should be immediately sent to press ; but that if he persisted in de- 
clining his friendship, he would publish the satire without delay. S 

replied, that he looked upon Wyvil’s panegyric as, in effect, a species of 
infamy, and would resent it accordingly with a good cudgel ; but if he pub- 
lished the satire, he might deserve his compassion, and had nothing to fear 
from his revenge. Wyvil having considered the alternative, resolved to mortify 

S by printing the panegyric, for which he received a sound drubbing. 

Then he swore the peace against the aggressor, who, in order to avoid a 
prosecution at law, admitted him to his good graces. It was the singularity 

in S 's conduct on this occasion, that reconciled him to the yellow-gloved 

philosopher, who owned he had some genius ; and from that period cultivated 
his acquaintance. 

“ Curious to know upon what subjects the several talents of my fellow-guests 
were employed, I applied to my communicative friend Dick Ivy, who gave me to 
understand that most of them were, or had been, understrappers, or journey- 
men, to more creditable authors, for whom they translated, collated, and 
compiled, in the business of bookmaking ; and that all of them had, at different 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 57S 

: battles ; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of con- 
troversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a 
niggard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; 
but his spirit was still resolute, and his courage steady ; the battle 
over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so 
fiercely engaged, and give a not unfriendly grasp to tlie hand that 
had mauled him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of whom 
history gives us so many examples, and whom, with a national 

times, laboured in the service of our landlord, though they had now set up for 
themselves in various departments of literature. Not only their talents, but also 
their nations and dialects, were so various, that our conversation resembled the 
confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, 
and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation ; for as they 
all spoke together, no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl 
louder than his- fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic 
in their discourse ; they carefully avoided all learned disquisitions, and endea- 
voured to be facetious : nor did their endeavours always miscarry ; some droll 
repartee passed, and much laughter was excited ; and if any individual lost his 
temper so far as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually checked 
by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority over this 
irritable tribe. 

“The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been ex- 
pelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation of 
Lord Bolingbroke’s metaphysical works, which is said to be equally ingenious 
and orthodox ; but, in the meantime, he has been presented to the grand jury 
as a public nuisance for having blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord’s day. 
The Scotchman gives lectures on the pronunciation of the English language, 
which he is now publishing by subscription. 

“The Irishman is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord 
Potatoe. He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a Minister, hoping his zeal 
would be rewarded with some place or pension ; bfit finding himself neglected 
in that quarter, he whispered about that the pamphlet was written by the 
Minister himself, and he published an answer to his own production. In this 
he addressed the author under the title of ‘your Lordship,’ with such solemnity, 
that the public swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole impression. The 
wise politicians of the metropolis declared they were both masterly performances, 
and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an ignorant garreteer, as the profound 
speculations of a veteran statesman, acquainted with all the secrets of the 
cabinet. The imposture was detected in the sequel, and our Hibernian 
pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed importance but the bare title of 
‘ my Lord,’ and the upper part of the table at the potatoe-ordinary in Shoe 
Lane. 

“Opposite to me sat a' Piedmontese, who had obliged the public with a 
humorous satire, entitled The Balance of the English Poets ; a performance which 
evinced the great modesty and taste of the author, and, in particular, his inti- 
macy with the elegancies of the English language. The sage, who laboured 
under the dypo<po^La, or ‘horror of green fields,’ had just finished a treatise on 
practical agriculture, though, in fact, he had never seen corn growing in his life, 
and was so ignorant of grain, that our entertainer, in the face of the whole 


f 


574 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


fidelity, the great Scotch novelist has painted so charmingly. Of 
gentle birth * and narrow means, going out from his northern home 
to win his fortune in the world, and to fight his way, armed with 
courage, hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, 

company, made him own that a plate of hominy was the best rice-pudding he 
had ever eat. 

“The stut erer had almost finished his travels through Europe and part of 
Asia, without ever budging beyond the liberties of the. King’s Bench, except in 
term-time with a tipstaff for his companion ; and as for little Tim Cropdale, the j 
most facetious member of the whole sopiety, he had happily wound up the 
catastrophe of a virgin tragedy, from the exhibition of which he promised himself 
a large fund of profit and reputation. Tim had made shift to live many years 
by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume ; but that branch of 
business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the pro- 
pagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge 
of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader 
is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality. 

“ After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where I observed Mr. S 

give a short separate audience to every individual in a small remote filbert-walk, 
from whence most of them dropped off one after another, without further 
ceremony.’’ 

Smollett’s house was in Lawrence Lane, Chelsea, and is now destroyed. — 
Handbook of London, p. 115. 

“The person of Smollett was eminently handsome, his features preposses- 
sing, and, by the joint testimony of all his surviving friends, his conversation, in 
the highest degree, instructive and amusing. Of his disposition, those who have 
read his works (and who has not ?) may form a very accurate estimate ; for in 
each of them he has presented, and sometimes under various points of view, the 
leading features of his own character without disguising the most unfavourable 
of them. . . . When unseduced by his satirical propensities, he was kind, 
generous, and humane to others ; bold, upright, and independent in his own 
character ; stooped to no patron, sued for no favour, but honestly and honour- 
ably maintained himself on his literary labours. . . . He was a doting father 
and an affectionate husband ; and the warm zeal with which his memory was 
cherished by his surviving friends showed clearly the reliance which they placed 
upon his regard.’’ — Sir Walter Scott. 

* Smollett of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire. Arms, azure, a bend, or, between 
a lion rampant, ppr., holding in his paw a banner, argent, and a bugle-horn, 
also ppr. Crest, an oak-tree, ppr. Motto, Viresco. 

Smollett’s father, Archibald, was the fourth son of Sir James Smollett of 
Bonhill, a Scotch Judge and Member of Parliament, and one of the commis- 
sioners for framing the Union with England. Archibald married, without the 
old gentleman’s consent, and died early, leaving his children dependent on 
their grandfather. Tobias, the second son, was born in 1721, in the old house 
of Dalquharn in the valley of Leven ; and all his life loved and admired tliat 
valley and Loch Lomond beyond all the valleys and lakes in Europe. He 
learned the “rudiments” at Dumbarton Grammar School, and studied at 
Glasgow. 

But when he was only ten, his grandfather died, and left him without pro- 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 575 

with green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms 
there is a lion and a horn ; this shield of his was battered and dinted 
in a hundred fights and brawls,* through which the stout Scotch- 
man bore it courageously. You see somehow that he is a gentleman, 

vision (figviring as the old judge in Roderick Random in consequence, according 
to Sir Walter). Tobias, armed with the Regicide, a Tragedy — a provision pre- 
cisely similar to that with which Doctor Johnson had started, just before — came 
up to London. The Regicide came to no good, though at first patronised by 
Lord Lyttelton (“one of those little fellows who are sometimes called great 
men, Smollett says); and Smollett embarked as “ surgeon’s mate ” onboard 
a line-of-battle ship, and served in the Carthagena expedition, in 1741. He 
left the service in the West Indies, and, after residing some time in Jamaica, 
returned to England in 1746. 

He was now unsuccessful as a physician, to begin with ; published the 
satires. Advice and Reproof, without any luck ; and (1747) married the “beau- 
tiful and accomplished Miss Lascelles.” 

In 1748 he brought out his Roderick Random, which at once made a “ hit.” 
I he subsequent events of his life may be presented, chronologically, in a bird’s- 
eye view : — 

1750. Made a tour to Paris, where he chiefly wrote Peregrine Pickle. 

1751. Published Peregrine Pickle. 

1753* Published Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. 

175s Published version of Don Quixote. 

1756. Began the Critical Review. 

1758. Published his History of England. 

1763-1766. Travelling in France and Italy ; published his Travels. 

1769. Published Adventures of an Atom. 

1770. Set out for Italy; died at Leghorn, 21st of October 1771, in the fifty- 
first year of his age. 

* A good specimen of the old “ slashing’’ style of writing is presented by 
the paragraph on Admiral Knowles, which subjected Smollett to prosecution 
and imprisonment. The admiral’s defence on the occasion of the failure of the 
Rochefort expedition came to be examined before the tribunal of the Critical 
Review. 

“ He is,” said our author, “an admiral without conduct, an engineer with- 
out knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity ! ” 

Three months’ imprisonment in the King’s Bench avenged this stinging 
paragraph. 

But the Critical was to Smollett a perpetual fountain of “ hot water.” 
Among less important controversies may be mentioned that with Grainger, the 
translator of Tibullus. Grainger replied in a pamphlet ; and in the next 
number of the Review we find him threatened with “castigation,” as an “owl 
that has broken from his mew ! ” 

In Doctor Moore’s biography of him is a pleasant anecdote. After publish- 
ing the Don Quixote, he returned to Scotland to pay a visit to his mother ; — 

“ On Smollett’s arrival, he was introduced to his mother with the connivance 
of Mrs. Telfer (her daughter), as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was 
intimately acquainted witii her son. The better to support his assumed char- 
acter, he endeavoured to preserve a serious countenance, approaching to a 


li 


570* ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

through all his battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought 
successes, and his defeats. His novels are recollections of his own 
adventures ; his characters drawn, as I should think, from person- 
ages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. 
Strange companions he must have had ; queer acquaintances he 
made in the Glasgow College — in the country apothecary’s shop ; 
in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as surgeon ; 
and in the hard life on shore, where the sturdy adventurer struggled 
for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the 
keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonder- 
ful relish and delightful broad humour. I think Uncle Bowling, 
in “ Roderick Random,” is as good a character as Squire Western 
himself; and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apotliecary, is as pleasant as 
Doctor Gains. What man who has made his inestimable acquaint- 
ance — what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and Major Dalgetty 
— will refuse his most cordial acknowledgments to the admirable 
Lieutenant Lismahago ? The novel of “ Humphrey Clinker ” is, I 
do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since 
the goodly art of novel- writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha 
Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come ; 
and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual 
fount of sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud’s well. 

Fielding, too, has described, though wdth a greater hand, the 
characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than 
ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His 
family and education, first — his fortunes and misfortunes afterwards, 
brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. 

frown ; but while his mother’s eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could 
net refrain from smiling ; she immediately sprung from her chair, and throwing 
her arms round his neck, exclaimed, ‘ Ah, my son ! my son ! I have found you 
at last ! ’ 

“ She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere looks and continued 
to gloom, he might have escaped detection some time longer, but ‘ your old 
roguish smile,’ added she, ‘ betrayed you at once.’ ” 

“Shortly after the publication of The Adventures of an Atom, disease again 
attacked Smollett with redoubled violence. Attempts being vainly made to 
obtain for him the office of Consul in some part of the Mediterranean, he was 
compelled to seek a warmer climate, without better means of provision than his 
own precarious finances could afford. The kindness of his distinguished friend 
and countryman. Dr. Armstrong (then abroad), procured for Dr. and Mrs. 
Smollett a house at Monte Nero, a village situated on the side of a mountain 
overlooking the sea, in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, a romantic and salutary 
abode, where he prepared for the press the last, and, like music ‘ sweetest in the 
close,’ the most pleasing of his compositions. The Expedition of Humphrey 
Clinker. This delightful work was published in 1771.” — Sir Walter Scott. 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 577 

He is himself the hero of his books : he is wild Tom Jones, he is 
wild Captain Booth ; less wild, I am glad to think, than his 
predecessor ; at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to 
amend. 

When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recollec- 
tion of the great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and assem- 
blies, and the judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had 
more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. 
His figure was tall and stalwart ^ his face handsome, manly, and 
noble-looking • to the very last days of his life he retained a grandeur 
of air, and although worn down by disease, his aspect and presence 
imposed respect upon the people round about him. 

A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain * 
of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding 
relates how the man finally went down on his knees, and begged 
his passenger’s pardon. He was living up to the last days of his 
life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have 
been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu f prettily 
characterises Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he 

* The dispute with the captain arose from the wish of that functionary to 
intrude on his right to his cabin, for which he had paid thirty pounds. After 
recounting the circumstances of the apology, he characteristically adds ; — 

"And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, 
I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. N^either did the greatness of 
my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact this forgiveness. To 
speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would make men much more 
forgiving, if they were much wiser than they are : because it was convenient for 
me so to do.” 

t Lady Mary was his second cousin — their respective grandfathers being sons 
of George Fielding, Earl of Desmond, son of William, Earl of Denbigh, 

In a letter dated just a week before his death, she says : — 

" H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife in the 
characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; 
and I am p>ersuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of 
fact. I wonder he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry 
scoundrels. . . . Fielding has really a fund of true humour, and was to be 
pitied at his first entrance into the world, having no choice, as he said himself, 
but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman. His genius deserved a 
better fate ; but I cannot help blaming that continued indiscretion, to give it the 
softest name, that has run through his life, and I am afraid still remains. . . , 
Since I was born no original has appeared excepting Congreve, and Fielding, 
who would, I believe, have approached nearer to his excellences, if not forced 
by his necessities to publish without correction, and throw many productions 
into the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been got 
without money, or money without scribbling. ... I am sorry not to see any 
more of Peregrine Pickle’s performances ; I wish you would tell me his name.” — 
Letters and Works (Lord Wharncliffe’s ed.), vol. iii, pp. 93, 94. 

7 2 O 


11 


578 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


possessed, in a little notice of his death when she compares him to 
Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and says 
that both should have gone on living for ever. One can fancy the 
eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding’s frame, with his 
vast health and robust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humour, 
and his keen and healthy relish for life, must have seized and drunk 
that cup of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of i 
my hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast — the | 
meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast ? I can 
call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful banquets, and j 
fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the feast, with his I 
great laugh, and immense healthy young appetite, eager and vigorous . 
to enjoy. The young man’s wit and manners made him friends 
everywhere ; he lived with the grand Man’s society of those days ; ■ 
he was courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he ; 
had a paternal allowance from his father. General Fielding, which, ; 
to use Henry’s own phrase, any man might pay who would ; as he ^ 
liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, which are all ex- } 
pensive articles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, 
and borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth 
borrows money in the novel : was in nowise particular in accepting 
a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore down 
upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for 
a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began 
to write theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable 
acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the 
scenes. He laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When 
the audience upon one occasion began to hiss a scene which he 
was too lazy to correct, and regarding which, when Garrick remon- , 
strated with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find ■ 
out the badness of his work : when the audience began to hiss, i 
Fielding said with characteristic coolness — “They have found it { 
out, have they ? ” He did not prepare his novels in this way, and j 
with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and . 
built up the edifices of his future fame. 

Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion 
and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age, but 
the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions 
— masterpieces of genius and monuments of workmanlike skill. , 

I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. W^hy ( 
hide his faults I Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of peri- ! 
phrases 'I Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a } 
marble toga, and draped and polished in an heroic attitude, but • 
with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished laced coat, [ 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 579 

and on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of 
kindness, of care and winel Stained as you see him, and worn by 
care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious 
and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admir- 
able natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to 
hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His 
wit is wonderfully wise and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and 
lightens up a rascal like a policeman’s lantern. He is one of the 
manliest and kindliest of human beings : in the midst of all his 
imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness 
as you would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would 
respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, 
truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and 
tender. He will give any man his purse — he can’t help kindness 
and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind ; he 
admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no 
flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public 
duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his 
work.* 

If that theory be — and I have no doubt it is — the right and 
safe one, tlmt human nature is always pleased with the spectacle 
of innocence rescued by fidelity, purity, and courage, I suppose that 
of the heroes of Fielding’s three novels, we should like honest 
Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the second, and Tom 
Jones the third, f 

Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby’s cast-off livery, 
is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian suit, 
or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large 
calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and a handsome face. The 
accounts of Joseph’s bravery and good qualities; his voice, too 
musical to halloo to the dogs ; his bravery in riding races for the 
gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in refusing bribes and 
temptation, have something affecting in their naivete and freshness, 
and prepossess one in favour of that handsome young hero. The 

* He sailed for Lisbon, from Gravesend, on Sunday morning, June 30th, 
1754 ; and began The Journal of a Voyage during the passage. He died at 
Lisbon, in the beginning of October of the same year. He lies buried there, 
in the English Protestant churchyard, near the Estrella Church, with this 
inscription over him : — 

“HENRICUS FIELDING 
LUGET BRITANNIA GREMIO NON DARI 
FOVERE NATUM.” 

f Fielding himself is said by Doctor Warton to have preferred Joseph 
Andrews to his other writings. 


580 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of Parson 
Adams, are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of 
their story ; we part from them with more regret than from Booth 
and Jones. 

Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of 
“ Pamela,” for which work one can understand the hearty contempt 
and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius as 
Fielding’s must have entertained. He couldn’t do otherwise than 
laugh at the puny cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes 
of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a mollcoddle 
and a milksop. His genius had been nursed on sack posset, and 
not on dishes of tea. His muse had sung the loudest in tavern 
choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of 
emptied bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of 
the watchman. Richardson’s goddess was attended by old maids 
and dowagers, and fed on muffins and bohea. “ Milksop ! ” roars 
Harry Fielding, clattering at the timid shop-shutters. “ Wretch ! 
Monster ! Mohock ! ” shrieks the sentimental author of “ Pamela ” ; * 
and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. 
Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, whom 
he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at ; but he is himself 
of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like the 
characters which he invents, can’t help making them manly and 
pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them 
all, loves them heartily every one. 

Richardson’s sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as 
natural as the other’s laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist. 
I have not learned that these likings and dislikings have ceased in 
the present day : and every author must lay his account not only to 
misrepresentation, but to honest enmity among critics, and to being 
hated and abused for good as well as for bad reasons. Richardson 
disliked Fielding’s works quite honestly : Walpole quite honestly 
spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their squeamish stomachs 
sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests assembled at 
Fielding’s jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been cleaner : 

* “Richardson,” says worthy Mrs. Barbauld, in her Memoir of him, pre- 
fixed to his Correspondence, “was exceedingly hurt at this {Joseph Andrews), 
the more so as they had been on good terms, and he was very intimate with 
Fielding’s two sisters. He never appears cordially to have forgiven it (perhaps 
it was not in human nature he should), and he always speaks in his letters 
with a great deal of asperity of Tom Jones, more indeed than was quite graceful 
in a rival author. No doubt he himself thought his indignation was solely 
excited by the loose morality of the work and of its author, but he could tolerate. 
Cibber.” 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 581 

ami the dinner and tlie company were scarce such as suited a dandy. 
The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.* 
But a ^eater scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that 
astonishing genius of Harry Fielding; and we all know the lofty 
panegyric which Gibbon wrote of him, and which remains a tower- 
ing monument to the great novelist’s memory. “ Our immortal 
Fielding,” Gibbon writes, “ was of the younger branch of the Earls 
of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. 
The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England, 
but the romance of ‘Tom Jones,’ that exquisite picture of humour 
and manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the 
Imperial Eagle of Austria.” 

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. 
To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written 
on the dome of St. Peter’s. Pilgrims from all the world admire 
and behold it. 

As a picture of manners, the novel of “ Tom Jones ” is indeed 
exquisite : as a work of construction, quite a wonder : the by-play 
of wisdom ; the power of observation ; the multiplied felicitous 
turns and thoughts ; the varied character of the great Comic Epic : 
keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity.! But 
against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a 
protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for 
that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones, that a single 
hearty laugh from him “ clears the air” — but then it is in a certain 

* It must always be borne in mind, that besides that the Doctor couldn’t 
be expected to like Fielding’s wild life (to say nothing of the fact that they 
were of opposite sides in politics), Richardson was one of his earliest and 
kindest friends. Yet Johnson too (as Boswell tells us) read Amelia through 
without stopping. 

t “ Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals 
appear to change— actually change with some, but appear to change with all 
but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom 
Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c., would not be a 
Tom Jones ; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the 
ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a 
harridan of fortune. Therefore, this novel is, and indeed pretends to be, no 
example of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which 
can recommend Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral, although they 
poison the imagination xif the young with continued doses of linct lyttce, while 
T om Jones is prohibited as loose. 1 do not speak of young women ; but a 
young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited 
by this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, 
breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, 
hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.” — Coleridge, Literary Remains, 
vol. ii. p. 374. 


II 


582 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such person- 
ages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much 
that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. J ones 
enters Sophia’s drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted 
with the young gentleman’s tobacco-pipe and punch. I can’t say 
that I think Mr. Jones a virtuous character ; I can’t say but that 
I think Fielding’s evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones 
shows that the great humourist’s moral sense was blunted by his 
life, and that here, in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it 
is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take 
care that he is admirable : if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan 
decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is propounded that 
there exists in life no such being, and therefore that in novels, the 
picture of life, there should appear no such character; then Mr. 
Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his 
defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwackum, 
or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation ; a hero 
springing for a guinea ; a hero who can’t pay his landlady, and is 
obliged to let his honour out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to 
heroic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding 
such rank at all. I protest even against his being considered a 
more than ordinary young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, 
and fond of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but 
that is all ; and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to 
which of these old types — the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and 
Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface — is the worst member of society 
and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal Captain Booth is 
a better man than his predecessor Mr. J ones, in so far as he thinks 
much more humbly of himself than Jones did : goes down on his 
knees, and owns his weaknesses, and cries out, “Not for my sake, 
but for the sake of my pure and sweet and beautiful wife 
Amelia, I pray you, 0 critical reader, to forgive me.” That stern 
moralist regards him from the bench (the judge’s practice out of 
court is not here the question), and says, “Captain Booth, it is 
perfectly true that your life has been disreputable, and that on 
many occasions you have shown yourself to be no better than a 
scamp — you have been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest 
and sweetest lady in the world has cooked your little supper of 
boiled mutton and awaited you all the night ; you have spoilt the 
little dish of boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains 
to Amelia’s tender heart.* You have got into debt without the 

* " Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that beloved 
first wife, whose picture he drew in his ‘ Amelia,’ when, as she said, even the 
glowing language he knew how to employ did not do more than justice to the 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 583 

means of paying it. You have gambled the money with which 
you ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink 
or in worse amusements the sums which your poor wife has 
raised upon her little home treasures, her own ornaments, and 
the toys of her children. But, you rascal ! you own humbly 
that you are no better than you should be ; you never for 
one moment pretend that you are anything but a miserable weak- 
minded rogue. You do in your heart adore that angelic woman 
your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your dis- 
charge. Lucky for you, and for others like you, that in spite 
of your failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love 
you. For your wife’s sake you are permitted to go hence 
without a remand ; and I beg you, by the way, to carry to that 
angelical lady the expression of the cordial respect and admira- 
tion of this court.” Amelia pleads for her husband. Will 
Booth : Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry 
Fielding. To have invented that character is not only a triumph 
of art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his own 
home that Fielding knew her and loved her : and from his 
own wife that he drew the most charming character in English 
fiction. Fiction ! why fiction ? why not history ? I know Amelia 

amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered 
a little from the accident related in the novel — a frightful overturn, which 
destroyed the gristle of her nose. He loved her passionately, and she returned 
his affection. . . . 

“ His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that, after the death 
of this charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act was not so 
discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal 
charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and 
almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, 
which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping along with 
her : nor solace when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they 
mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential associate, and in 
process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer 
mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At 
least, this was what he told his friends ; and it is certain that her conduct as 
his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion ,” — Letters and Works 
of Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. Edited by Lord Wharncliffe. Introductory 
Anecdotes, vol. i. pp. 8o, 8i. 

Fielding’s first wife was Miss Craddock, a young lady from Salisbury, with 
a fortune of £t.^oo, whom he married in 1736. About the same time he 
succeeded, himself, to an estate of £<200 per annum, and on the joint amount 
he lived for some time as a splendid country gentleman in Dorsetshire, Three 
years brought him to the end of his fortune ; when he returned to London, and 
became a theatrical manager. [Recent researches have not confirmed the 
report as to the “estate of £200 a year” ; nor can he have spent three years in 
the country.] 


II 


584 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel 
Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of 
Cumberland. I admire the author of “Amelia,” and thank the 
kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful 
companion and friend. “Amelia” perhaps is not a better story 
than “Tom Jones,” but it has the better ethics; the prodigal 
repents, at least, before forgiveness — whereas that odious broad- 
backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of 
remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings; and is not half 
punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls 
to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum- 
cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young 
scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of 
decorum ; the fond, foolish palpitating little creature ! — “ Indeed, 
Mr. Jones,” she says, — “it rests with you to appoint the day.” 
I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia ; and many 
a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by 
a coup de main the heart of many a kind girl who was a great deal 
too good for him. 

What a wonderful art ! What an admirable gift of nature was 
it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which 
enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize 
upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people — speculate 
gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer this one or 
that, deplore Jones’s fondness for play and drink. Booth’s fond- 
ness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives 
of both gentlemen — love and admire those ladies with all our 
hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted 
with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should 
meet them this afternoon in the Park ! What a genius ! what 
a vigour ! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation ! what 
a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery ! what a vast 
sympathy ! what a cheerfulness ! what a manly relish of life ! 
what a love of human kind! what a poet is here! — watching, 
meditating, brooding, creating ! What multitudes of truths has 
that man left behind him ! What generations he has taught to 
laugh wisely and fairly ! What scholars he has formed and ac- 
customed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly 
play of wit ! What a courage he had ! What a dauntless and 
constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady 
through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! 
It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man 
suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured ! 
and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his 


HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 585 

view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never 
surrendered.* 

In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding’s 
last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell 
down on his knees, and asked the sick’s man’s pardon— “ I did not 
suffer. Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting 
up as it were with their old fire — “ I did not suffer a brave man 
and an old man to remain a moment in that posture, but imme- 
diately forgave him.” Indeed, I think, with his noble spirit and 

* In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1786, an anecdote is related of Harry 
Fielding, “in whom,” says the correspondent, “good-nature and philanthropy 
in their extreme degree were known to be the prominent features.” It seems 
that some parochial taxes ” for his house in Beaufort Buildings had long been 
demanded by the collector. “ At last, Harry went off to Johnson, and obtained 
by a process of literary mortgage the needful sum. He was returning with it, 
when he met an old college chum whom he had not seen for many years. He 
asked the chum to dinner with him at a neighbouring tavern ; and learning that 
he was in difficulties, emptied the contents of his pocket into his. On returning 
home he was informed that the collector had been twice for the money. ‘ Friend- 
ship has called for the money and had it,’ said Fielding; 'let the collector call 
again.’ ” 

It is elsewhere told of him, that being in company with the Earl of Denbigh, 
his kinsman, and the conversation turning upon their relationship, the Earl 
asked him how it was that he spelled his name “Fielding,” and not “ Feilding,” 
like the head of the house? “ I cannot tell, my Lord,” said he, “ except it be 
that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell.” 

In 1748, he was made Justice of the Peace for Westminster and Middlesex, 
an office then paid by fees and very laborious, without being particularly 
reputable. It may be seen from his own words, in the Introduction to the 
“ Voyage,” what kind of work devolved upon him, and in what a state he was 
during these last years ; and still more clearly, how he comported himself 
through all. 

“ Whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to 
death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all com- 
mitted within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers, I received 
a message from his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the King’s 
messenger, to attend his Grace the next morning in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, upon 
some business of importance; but I excused myself from complying with the 
message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues I had 
lately undergone, added to my distemper. 

“His Grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington the very next morning with 
another summons, with which, though in the utmost distress, I immediately 
complied ; but the Duke happening, unfortunately for me, to be then particularly 
engaged, after I had waited some time, sent a gentleman to discourse with me 
on the best plan which could be invented for these murders and robberies, which 
were every day committed in the streets ; upon which I promised to transmit my 
opinion in writing to his Grace, who, as the gentleman informed me, intended to 
lay it before the Privy Council. 

“ Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself down 


586 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave men 
of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters — 
of the officer on the African shore, when disease had destroyed the 
crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with 
a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of 
the river or off the dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavour 
— of the wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never 
loses his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheery word 
for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant 
ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid 
and courageous spirit, I love to recognise in the manly, the English i 
Harry Fielding. 

to work, and in about four days sent the Duke as regular a plan as I could form, 
with all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support it, drawn out on 
several sheets of paper ; and soon received a message from the Duke, by Mr. 
Carrington, acquainting me that my plan was highly approved of, and that all 
the terms of it would be complied with. 

“The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately 
depositing ^600 in my hands ; at which small charge I undertook to demolish 
the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into such order, that no such 
gangs should ever be able for the future to form themselves into bodies, or at 
least to remain any time formidable to the public. 

“I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated 
advice of my physical acquaintances and the ardent desire of my warmest 
friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice ; in which 
case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had 
the most eager desire to demolish this gang of villains and cut-throats. . . . 

“After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a few 
days after ;^2oo of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of cut-throats was 
entirely dispersed. ...” 

Further on, he says — 

“I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had 
but a gloomy aspect ; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those 
sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, 
have been pleased to suspect me of taking ; on the contrary, by composing, 
instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when ' 
I say hath not been universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling 
from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had 
reduced an income of about ;^Soo a year of the dirtiest money upon earth 
to little more than ;^300, a considerable portion of which remained with my 
clerk." 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


R oger STERNE, Steme’s father, was the second son of a 
numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop 
of York, in the reign of Charles II.; * * * § and children of Simon 
Sterne and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.f 
Roger was an ensign in Colonel Hans Hamilton’s regiment, and 
engaged in Flanders in Queen Anne’s wars.| He married the 
daughter of a noted sutler. N.B., he was in debt to him,” his 
son writes, pursuing the paternal biography — and marched through 
the world with this companion ; she following the regiment and 
bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne. The Captain was an 
irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, and he informs 
us that his sire was run through the body at Gibraltar, by a brother 
officer, in a duel which arose out of a dispute about a goose. Roger 
never entirely recovered from the effects of this rencontre, but died 
presently at Jamaica,§ whither he had followed the drum. 

Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, in 
1713, and travelled for the first ten years of his life, on his father’s 
march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to England. || 

One relative of his mother’s took her and her family under 
shelter for ten months at Mullingar ; another collateral descendant 
of the Archbishop’s housed them for a year at his castle near 
Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was put to school at Halifax in 
England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of Elvington, and 

* [1664 to 1683.] 

f He came of a Suffolk family — one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire. 
The famous “ starling” was actually the family crest. 

X [He was appointed ensign about 1710. The regiment became Colonel 
Chudleigh’s in 1711, and afterwards the 34th Foot. He did not become lieutenant 
till late in life.] 

§ [March 1731.] 

II “It was in this parish (of Animo, in Wicklow), during our stay, that I 
had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was 
going, and of being taken up unhurt : the story is incredible, but known for 
truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked 
to see me.” — Sterne. 


i 


588 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS y 

h 

parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched on his i 
path of life till he met the fatal goose which closed his career. The } 
most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence Sterne’s writings 
we owe to his recollections of the military life. Trim’s montero i 
cap, and Le Fevre’s sword, and dear Uncle Toby’s roquelaure are ‘j*' 
doubtless reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers ^ 
of William and Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet • 
to the fifes of Rarnillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn • 
flags and halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel. 

Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years 
old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of , 
his master here ; for when the usher whipped Laurence for writing 
his name on the newly whitewashed schoolroom ceiling, the peda- . 
gogue in chief rebuked the understrapper, and said that the name * 
should never be effaced, for Sterne was a boy of genius, and would , 
come to preferment. ^ 

His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus ‘I 
College, Cambridge, where he remained some years,* and, taking ' 
orders, got, through his uncle’s interest, the living of Sutton and a i 
})rebendal stall at York.f Through his wife’s connections he got 
the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741, having ardently !J 
courted the young lady for some years previously. It was not until 
the young lady fancied herself dying, that she made Sterne ac- ^ 
quainted with the extent of her liking for him. One evening when ,3 
he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see her so i 
ill (the reverend Mr. Sterne’s heart was a good deal broken in the | 
course of his life), she said — “My dear Laurey, I never can be i 
yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live ; but I have left | 
you every shilling of my fortune ; ” a generosity which overpowered I 
Sterne. She recovered : and so they were married, and grew ^ 
heartily tired of each other before many years were over. “Nescio / 
quid est materia cum me,” Sterne writes to one of his friends (in 
dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too) ; “ sed sum fatigatus et i 
segrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam : ” which means, I am 
sorry to say, “ I don’t know what is the matter with me ; but I am > 
more tired and sick of my wife than ever.” | ' 

* [He was admitted sizar on 6th July 1733, became an exhibitioner in 1734, 
graduated B.A. in 1736, and M.A. 1740.] 

t [Sterne was presented to Sutton, where he generally lived till 1760, in 1738. 

He became prebendary of York in January 1740-41. In 1760 he moved to Cox- ’| 
wold, on being presented to the perpetual curacy. He held a stall at York, 
and the three livings, Sutton, Stillington, and Coxwold, till his death.] ^ 

X “My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at ; 
Bagn^res. I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in Yorkshire. 

We all live the longer at least the happier, for having things our own way ; 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 589 

This to be sure was five-and-twenty years * after Laurey had 
been overcome by her generosity, and she by Laurey’s love. Then 
he wrote to her of the delights of marriage, saying, “ We will be 
as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before 
the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene. The kindest affec- 
tions will have room to expand in our retirement : let the human 
tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond 
the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in 
December? — Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting 
wind. No planetary influence shall reach us but that which pre- 
sides and cherishes the sweetest flowers. The gloomy family of 
care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by 
thy kind and tutelar deity. We will sing our choral songs of 
gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgiimage. Adieu, my L. 
Return to one who languishes for thy society !— As I take up my 
pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are 
trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L.” 

And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault but 
that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, “ Sum fatigatus 
et segrotus ”■ — Sum utortaliter in amove with somebody else ! That 
fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so 
many tears, could not last for a quarter of a century ! 

Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such 
a fountain at command should keep it to arroser one homely old 
lady, when a score of younger and prettier people might be re- 
freshed from the same gushing source.! It was in December 
1767, that the Reverend Laurence Sterne, the famous Shandean, 
the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the 

this is my conjugal maxim. I own ’tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain 
’tis not the worst.” — Sterne’s Letters: 20th January 1764. [His wife was 
Elizabeth, only daughter of Richard Lumley, formerly rector of Bedale. Both 
parents died in her infancy.] 

* [This is probably a mistake. The Latin letter addressed to John Hall 
Stevenson is now known to have been written in 1758. Mrs. Sterne had a fit 
of insanity next year, and was for a time at a private asylum in York.] 

In a collection of “Seven Letters by Sterne and his Friends” (printed 
for private circulation in 1844), is a letter of M. Tollot, who was in France 
with Sterne and his family in 1764. Here is a paragraph : — 

“ Nous arrivames le lendemain k Montpellier, ou nous trouvames notre ami 
Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres Anglaises. 
J’eus, je vous I’avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant le bon et agrdable 
Tristram. ... II avait dtd assez longtemps k Toulouse, oil il se serait amusd 
sans sa femme, qui le poursuivit partout, et qui voulait etre de tout. Ces 
dispositions dans cette bonne dame lui ont fait passer d’assez mauvais momens ; 
il supporte tous ces ddsagr^mens avec une patience d’ange." 

About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to the 


1 


590 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


delicious divine for whose sermons the whole polite world was 
subscribing,* the occupier of Rabelais’s easy-chair, only fresh 
stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical 
old curate of Meudon,f — the more than rival of the Dean of 
Saint Patrick’s, wrote the above-quoted respectable letter to his 

same gentleman to whom Tollot had written ; and from his letter we may 
extract a companion paragraph : — 

“ All which being premised, I have been for eight weeks 

smitten with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish, 
dear cousin, thou couldst conceive (perhaps thou canst without my wishing it) 
how deliciously I cantered away with it the first month, two up, two down, 
always upon my hanches, along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once 
— then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of 
setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, 
considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The 
last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting ; and 
thou may’st conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait and air ; for I went 
and came like any louden’d carl, and did nothing but jouer des sentimens with 
her from sun-rising even to the setting of the same ; and now she is gone to 
the south of France : and to finish the comddie, I fell ill, and broke a vessel in 
my lungs, and half bled to death. Voili mon histoire !•” 

Whether husband or wife had most of the ‘ ‘ patience d’ange ” may be 
uncertain ; but there can be no doubt which needed it most ! 

* “ ‘ Tristram Shandy’ is still a greater object of admiration, the man as 
well as the book : one is invited to dinner, where he dines, a fortnight before. 
As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them and humour 
sometimes hit and sometimes missed. Have you read his ‘Sermons,’ with his 
own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them ? They 
are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagina- 
tion and a sensible heart ; but you see him often tottering on the verge of 
laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.” — Gray’s 
Letters : June 22nd, 1760. 

" It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London — 
Johnson : ‘ Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of 
pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The man, Sterne, I have 
been told, has had engagements for three months.’ Goldsmith: ‘And a very 
dull fellow.’ Johnson : ‘ Why, no, sir.’ ” — Boswell’s Life of Johnson. 

“ Her [Miss Monckton’s] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk 
together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened one evening, 
when she insisted that some of Sterne’s writings were very pathetic. Johnson 
bluntly denied it. ‘I am sure,’ said she, ‘they have affected me.’ ‘Why,’ 
said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about — ‘ that is because, dearest, 
you’re a dunce.’ When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said 
with equal truth and politeness, ‘ Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should 
not have said it.’ ” — Ibid. 

t A passage or two from Sterne’s Sermons may not be without interest here. 
Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the Church of Rome, 
stamped with the autograph of the author of the Sentimental Journey ? — 

“ To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 591 

friend in London ; and it was in April of the same year that he 
was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife 
of “ Daniel Draper, Esquire, Councillor of Bombay, and, in 1775, 
chief of the factory of Surat — a gentleman very much respected 
in that quarter of the globe.” * 

“ I got thy letter last night, Eliza,” Sterne writes, “ on my 
return from Lord Bathurst’s, where I dined”— (the letter has this 

Inquisition — behold religion with mercy and justice chained down under her 
feet — there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks, and 
instruments of torment. — Hark ! — what a piteous groan ! — See the melancholy 
wretch who uttered it, just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock- 
trial, and endure the utmost pain that a studied system of religious cruelty has 
been able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors. 
His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement, you ll see every nerve and 
muscle as it suffers. — Observe the last movement of that horrid engine. — What 
convulsions it has thrown him into ! Consider the nature of the posture in 
which he now lies stretched. — What exquisite torture he endures by it ! — ’Tis 
all nature can bear. — Good God ! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon 
his trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to depart. Behold 
the unhappy wretch led back to his cell — dragg’d out of it again to meet the 
flames — and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle — this principle, 
that there can be religion without morality — has prepared for him.”— • 
Sermon 'Z'jth. 

The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. vv. i, 2, 
3, concerning a “ certain Levite” : — 

“Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that un- 
comfortable blank in the heart in such a situation : for, notwithstanding all 
we meet with in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many 
handsome things said upon the sweets of retirement, &c. . . yet still ‘ it is not 
good for man to be alone;' nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns 
our ears with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind ; 
in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearn- 
ings for society and friendship ; a good heart wants some object to be kind to 
— and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits, suffer most 
under the destitution. 

“Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed 
him ! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way : let me be wise 
and religious, but let me be Man ; wherever thy Providence places me, or 
whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, 
be it only to remark to, ‘ How our shadows lengthen as our sun goes down ! ’ — 
to whom I may say, ‘ How fresh is the face of Nature ! how sweet the flowers 
of the field ! how delicious are these fruits ! ’ ” — Sermon x^th. 

The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous “ Captive.’’ 
The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to the Reverend 
Laurence by a text in Judges as by the fille-de-chambre. 

Sterne’s Sermons were published as those of “ Mr. Yorick.” 

* [Mrs. Draper, daughter of May Sclater, of a good west-country family, 
was married at Bombay in 1758, when little more than fourteen. She first met 
Sterne when on a visit to England in December 1766.] 


1 


592 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


merit in it, that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of better men 
than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind old gentle- 
man) — “ I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my return from Lord 
Bathurst’s ; and where I was heard — as I talked of thee an hour 
without intermission — with so much pleasure and attention, that 
the good old Lord toasted your health three different times ; and 
now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough to 
be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her 
eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in wealth as she does already 
in exterior and, what is far better ” (for Sterne is nothing without 
his morality), “ in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend 
of mine. You know he was always the protector of men of wit and 
genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, 
Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his 
notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up 
to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales’s Court, and said, 

‘ I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you also should 
know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an 
old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and 
spoken so much ? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast ; 
but have survived them ; and, despairing ever to find their equals, 
it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my 
accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them 
once more before I die : which I now do : so go home and dine 
with me.’ This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the 
wit and promptness of a man of thirty ; a disposition to be pleased, 
and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew : added to 
which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling. 

“ He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfaction 
— for there was only a third person, and of sensibility, with us : 
and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o’clock have we passed ! * 

* “lam glad that you are in love : ’twill cxire you at least of the spleen, which 
has a bad effect on both man and woman. I myself must ever have some Dulcinea 
in my head ; it harmonises the soul ; and in these cases I first endeavour to make 
the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in 
love : but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally : ‘ L’ amour,’ 
say they, ‘ n’est rien sans sentiment.’ Now, notwithstanding they make such 
a pother about word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so 
much for that same subject called love.” — Sterne’s Letters: May 23, 1765. 

" P.S. — M.y Sentimental Journey please Mrs. J(ames) and my Lydia” 

[his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle]— “ I can answer for those two. It is 
a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for 
some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world 
and our fellow-creatures better than we do— so it runs most upon those gentler 
passions and affections which aid so much to it. ” — Letters [1767]. 



LORD BATHURST INTRODUCES HIMSELF TO MR. STERNE. 


I 


I 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 59S 

But thou, Eliza, wert the star that conducted and enlivened the 
discourse ! And when I talked not of thee, still didst thou fill my 
mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for I am not ashamed 
to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good girls ! — the 
sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine, Eliza, 
are beyond the power of words. . . . And so thou hast fixed thy 
Bramin’s portrait over thy writing-desk, and wilt consult it in all 
doubts and difficulties'? — Grateful and good girl! Yorick smiles 
contentedly over all thou dost : his picture does not do justice to 
his own complacency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly 
beings ” (Eliza was at Deal, going back to the Councillor at Bom- 
bay, and indeed it was high time she should be off). “ You could 
least dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is 
soft and gentle, Eliza ; it would civilise savages — though pity were 
it thou shouldst be tainted with the office. Write to me, my 
child, thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy carelessness 
of a heart that opens itself anyhow, every how. Such, Eliza, I 
write to thee I ” (The artless rogue, of course he did I) “And so 
I should ever love thee, most artlessly, most affectionately, if 
Providence permitted thy residence in the same section of the 
globe : for I am all that honour and affection can make me ‘ Thy 
Bramin.’ ” 

The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the departure 
of the Uarl of Chatham Indiaman from Deal, on the 3rd of 
April 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh paint for 
Eliza’s cabin ; he is uncommonly solicitous about her companions on 
board : — . 

“I fear the best of your shipmates are only genteel by com- 
parison with the contrasted crew with which thou beholdest them. 
So was — you know who — from the same fallacy which was put 
upon your judgment when — but I will not mortify you ! ” 

“ You know who ” was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esquire, of 
Bombay — a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the 
globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin writes 
with delightful candour : — 

“ I honour you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, if 
explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity in 
venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal to the world 
for pity or redress. Well have you supported that character, my 
amiable, my philosophic friend ! And, indeed, I begin to think 
you have as* many virtues as my Uncle Toby’s widow. Talking of 
widows— pray, Eliza, if ever you are such, do not think of giving 


594 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


yourself to some wealthy Nabob, because I design to marry you 
myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the woman I 
should like so well for her substitute as yourself. ’Tis true I am 
ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five ; but what I 
want in youth, I will make up in wit and good-humour. Not 
Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his 
Saccharissa. Tell me, in answer to this, that you approve and 
honour the proposal.” 

Approve and honour the proposal ! The coward was writing 
gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to this 
poor foolish Bramine. Her ship was not out of the Downs and 
the charming Sterne was at the “ Mount Coffee-house,” with a sheet 
of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that precious treasure his 

heart to Lady P ,* asking whether it gave her pleasure to see 

him unhappy ? whether it added to her triumph that her eyes and 
lips had turned a man into a fool? — quoting the Lord’s Prayer, 
with a horrible baseness of blasphemy, as a proof that he had 
desired not to be led into temptation, and swearing himself the 
most tender and sincere fool in the world. It was from his home 
at Coxwold that he wrote the Latin Letter, which, I suppose, 
he was ashamed to put into English. I find in my copy of the 
Letters that there is a note of, I can’t call it admiration, at Letter 
112, which seems to announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the 
wretched worn-out old scamp was paying his addresses ; f and the 
year after, having come back to his lodgings in Bond Street, with 
his “ Sentimental Journey ” to launch upon the town, eager as ever 


* \i.e. Lady Percy, daughter of Lord Bute.] 


t To Mrs. H . 


“Coxwould: Nov. 15, 1767. 

“ Now be a good dear woman, my H , and execute those commissions 

well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss — there’s for you ! But I have 
something else for you which I am fabricating at a great rate, and that is my 
‘ Sentimental Journey,’ which shall make you cry as much as it has affected 
me, or I will give up the business of sentimental writing. . . . 

“ I am yours, &c. &c,, 

“T. Shandy.” 


To the Earl of . 

“ Coxwould : Nov. 28, 1767. 

“ My Lord,— ’Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your 
lordship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick : he was worn out, both his 
spirits and body, with the ‘ Sentimental Journey.’ ’Tis true, then, an author 
must feel himself, or his reader will not ; but I have torn my whole frame into 
pieces by my feelings : I believe the brain stands as much in need of recruiting 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


595 


for praise and pleasure — as vain, as wicked, as witty, as false as he 
had ever been — death at length seized the feeble wretch, and on the 
18th of March 1768, that “bale of cadaverous goods,” as he calls 
his body, was consigned to Pluto.* In his last letter there is one 
sign of grace — the real affection with which he entreats a friend to 
be a guardian to his daughter Lydia. All his letters to her are 
artless, kind, affectionate, and not sentimental ; as a hundred pages 
in his writings are beautiful, and full, not of surprising humour 
merely, but of genuine love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, 
is that of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recol- 
as the body. Therefore I shall set out for town the twentieth of next month, 
after having recruited myself a week at York. I might indeed solace myself 
with my wife (who is come from France) ; but, in fact, I have long been a 
sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think to the contrary.” 

[From April to August 1767, Sterne wrote a “Journal to Eliza,” which he 
called the “ Bramine’s Journal,” and described as a “ diary of the miserable feel- 
ings of a person separated from a lady for whose society he languished.” It has 
never been printed. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by Mr. Thomas 
Washbourne Gibbs, of Bath, who, in 1851, showed it to Thackeray with 
a view to this lecture. Thackeray returned it without using it, and told 
the owner that it made him think worse of Sterne than any of the published 
writings.] 

* “In February 1768, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long 
debilitating illness, expired at his lodgings in Bond Street, London. There 
was something in the manner of his death singularly resembling the particulars 
detailed by Mrs. Quickly as attending that of Falstaff, the compeer of Yorick, 
for infinite jest, however unlike in other particulars. As he lay on his bed 
totally exhausted, he complained that his feet were cold, and requested the 
female attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed to relieve him. He 
complained that the cold came up higher ; and whilst the assistant was in the 
act of chafing his ankles and legs, he expired without a groan. It was also 
remarkable that his death took place much in the manner which he himself had 
wished ; and that the last offices were rendered him, not in his own house, or 
by the hand of kindred affection, but in an inn, and by strangers. 

“ We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal appearance, 
to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a hectic and 
consumptive appearance.” — Sir Walter Scott. 

“ It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been told that 
his attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons while he was expiring,” 
— Dr. Ferriar. 

“ He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger’s), on the west side of Old Bond 
Handbook of London. [At Sterne’s death it is] said to have been a 
“ silk-bag shop ” ; it is now Agnew’s Picture Gallery. At his death, John Craw- 
ford of Erroll, who was entertaining some of Sterne’s friends, sent a footman 
to James Macdonald to inquire after his health. Macdonald, who published 
memoirs, was sent to Sterne’s bedside, and heard the dying man say, 
“Now it has come.” A few minutes later he was dead. He was buried in 
St. George’s burial-ground in the Bayswater Road, which has recently been put 
in order.] 


I 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


596 

lections, his personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and 
feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. 
Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader’s pity for a false 
sensibility 1 feign indignation, so as to establish a character for 
virtue^ elaborate repartees, so that he may pass for a wit? steal 
from other authors, and put down the theft to the credit side of his 
own reputation for ingenuity and learning ? feign originality ? alfect 
benevolence or misanthropy ? appeal to the gallery gods with claptraps 
and vulgar baits to catch applause ? 

How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the fair 
business of the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge is put 
on for the vanity of the actor ? His audience trusts him : can he 
trust himself? How much was deliberate calculation and imposture 
— how much was false sensibility — and how much true feeling? 
Where did the lie begin, and did he know where ? and where did 
the truth end in the art and scheme of this man of genius, this 
actor, this quack? Some time since, I was in the company of a 
French actor who began after dinner, and at his own request, to 
sing French songs of the sort called des chansons grivoises^ and 
which he performed admirably, and to the dissatisfaction of most 
persons present. Having finished these, he commenced a sentimental 
ballad — it was so charmingly sung that it touched all persons present, 
and especially the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes 
filled with emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite 
genuine tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose Sterne 
had this artistical sensibility ; he used to blubber perpetually in his 
study, and finding his tears infectious, and that they brought him 
a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift of weeping : he 
utilised it, and cried on every occasion. I own that I don’t value 
or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. He fatigues 
me with his perpetual disquiet and his uneasy appeals to my risible 
or sentimental faculties. He is always looking in my face, watching 
his effect, uncertain whether I think him an impostor or not ; 
posture-making, coaxing, and imploring me. “ See what sensibility 
I have — own now that I’m very clever— do cry now, you can’t 
resist this.” The humour of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended 
to succeed, poured from them as naturally as song does from a bird ; 
they lose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great 
laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this 
man — who can make you laugh, who can make you cry too — never 
lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose ; when you 
are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and 
heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great 
jester, not a great humourist. He goes to work systematically and 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 597 

of cold blood ; paints his face, puts on his ruff and motley clothes, 
and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it. 

For instance, take the “ Sentimental Journey,” and see in the 
writer the deliberate propensity to make points and seek applause. 
He gets to “Dessein’s Hotel,” he wants a carriage to travel to 
Paris, he goes to the inn-yard, and begins what the actors call 
“business” at once. There is that little carriage (the desohli- 
geante). 

“ Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of 
Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s coach-yard, and having 
sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at first, though it had 
been twice taken to pieces on Mont Cenis, it had not profited much 
by its adventures, but by none so little as the standing so many 
months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein^s coach-yard. 
Much, indeed, was not to be said for it — but something might-— and 
when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the 
man who can be a churl of them.” 

Le tour est fait ! Paillasse has tumbled ! Paillasse has 
jumped over the desobligeante, cleared it, hood and all, and bows 
to the noble company. Does anybody believe that this is a real 
Sentiment 1 that this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of 
Misery — out of an old cab, is genuine feeling ? It is as genuine as 
the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when he begins, “The man 
who,” &c. &c., and wishes to pass off for a saint with his credulous, 
good-humoured dupes. 

Our friend purchases the carriage : after turning that notorious 
old monk to good account, and effecting (like a soft and good- 
natured Paillasse as he was, and very free with his money when he 
had it) an exchange of snuffboxes with the old Franciscan, jogs out 
of Calais ; sets down in immense figures on the credit side of his 
account the sous he gives away to the Montreuil beggars ; and, at 
Nampont, gets out of the chaise and whimpers over that famous 
dead donkey, for which any sentimentalist may cry who will. 
It is agreeably and skilfully done — that dead jackass : like Mon- 
sieur de Soubise’s cook on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and 
serves it up quite tender and with a very piquant sauce. But 
tears and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a 
funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of 
mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey inside ! Psha, mounte- 
bank ! I’ll not give thee one penny more for that trick, donkey 
and all ! 

This donkey had appeared once before with signal effect. In 
1765, three years before the publication of the “Sentimental 
Journey,” the seventh and eighth volumes of “ Tristram Shandy ” 


I 


598 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

were given to the world, and the famous Lyons donkey makes his 
entry in those volumes (pp. 315, 316) : — 

“ ’Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at his 
back, who had just turned in to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops 
and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his two forefeet at 
the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards 
the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in 
or no. 

“ Now ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to 
strike : there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote so unaffectedly 
in his looks and carriage which pleads so mightily for him, that it 
always disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak 
unkindly to him : on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether 
in town or country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty 
or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my 
part ; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do 
as I), I generally fall into conversation with him ; and surely 
never is my imagination so busy as in framing responses from the 
etchings of his countenance; and where those carry me not deep 
enough, in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is 
natural for an ass to think — as well as a man, upon the occasion. 
In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below 
me with whom I can do this. . . . With an ass I can commune 
for ever. 

“ ‘ Come, Honesty,’ said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass 
betwixt him and the gate, ‘art thou for coming in or going 
outU 

“ The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. 

“ ‘ Well ! ’ replied I, ‘ we’ll wait a minute for thy driver.’ 

“ He turned his head thoughtfully about, and looked wistfully 
the opposite way. 

“ ‘I understand thee perfectly,’ answered I : ‘if thou takest a 
wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well ! a 
minute is but a minute ; and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, 
it shall not be set down as ill spent.’ 

“ He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse 
went on, and, in the little peevish contentions between hunger 
and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half-a-dozen 
times, and had picked it up again. ‘ God help thee. Jack ! ’ 
said I, ‘ thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t — and many a bitter day’s 
'labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages! ’Tis all, 
all bitterness to thee — whatever life is to others 1 And now thy 
mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as 
soot’ (for he had cast aside the stem), ‘and thou hast not a 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


599 

friend perhaps in all this world that will give thee a macaroon.’ 
In saying this, I pulled out a paper of ’em, which I had just 
bought, and gave him one ; and at this moment that I am telling 
it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the 
conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevo- 
lence in giving him one, which presided in the act. 

“ When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come 
in. The poor beast was heavy loaded — his legs seemed to tremble 
under him — he hung rather backwards, and, as I pulled at his 
halter, it broke in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face : 

‘ Don’t thrash me with it ; but if you will you may.’ ‘ If I do,’ 
said I, ‘ I’ll be d .’ ” 

A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, 
humour, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, 
must be hard indeed to move and to please. A page or two 
farther we come to a description not less beautiful — a landscape 
and figures, deliciously painted by one who had the keenest enjoy- 
ment and the most tremulous sensibility — 

’Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is the 
best Muscatto wine in all France : the sun was set, they had done 
their work : the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, and the 
swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead 
point. ‘’Tis the pipe and tambourine,’ said I — ‘I never will 
argue a point with one of your family as long as I live;’ so 
leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch 
and t’other into that, ‘ I’ll take a dance,’ said I, ‘ so stay you 
here.’ 

“ A sunburnt daughter of labour rose, up from the group to meet 
me as I advanced towards them ; her hair, which was of a dark 
chestnut approaching to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a 
single tress. 

“ ‘ We want a cavalier,’ said she, holding out both her hands, 
as if to offer them. ‘ And a cavalier you shall have,’ said I, taking 
hold of both of them. ‘ We could not have done without you,’ said 
she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, and leading 
me up with the other. 

“ A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, 
and to which he had added a tambourine of his own accord, ran 
sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank. ‘ Tie me up 
this tress instantly,’ said Nannette, putting a piece of string into 
my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stranger. The whole 
knot fell down — we had been seven years acquainted. The youth 
struck the note upon the tambourine, his pipe followed, and off we 
bounded. 


600 ENGLISH HIJMOUEISTS 

“ The sister of the youth — who had stolen her voice from heaven 
— sang alternately with her brother. ’Twas a Gascoigne roundelay : 

‘ Viva la joia, Jidon la tristessa.' The nymphs joined in unison, 
and their swains an octave below them. 

“ Viva la joia was in Nannette’s lips, viva la joia in her 
eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt 
us. She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my 
days thus*? ‘Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows!’ cried I, 

‘ why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and 
dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this 
nut-brown maidi’ Capriciously did she bend her head on one 
side, and dance up insidious. ‘Then ’tis time to dance off,’ 
quoth I.” 

And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully 
concludes. Even here one can’t give the whole description. There 
is not a page in Sterne’s writing but has something that were better 
away, a latent corruption — a hint, as of an impure presence.* 

Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer 
times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul satyr’s eyes 

* “With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which presses 
so seriously upon his character as a writer, I would remark that there is a sort 
of knowingness, the wit of which depends, ist, on the modesty it gives pain to ; 
or, 2ndly, on the innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs ; 
or, srdly, on a certain oscillation in the individual’s own mind between the 
remaining good and the encroaching evil of his nature — a sort of dallying with 
the devil — a fluxionary art of combining courage and cowardice, as when a man 
snuffs a candle with his fingers for the first time, or better still, perhaps, like 
that trembling daring with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has 
been forbidden ; so that the mind has its own white and black angel ; the same 
or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place between an old 
debauchee and a prude — the feeling resentment, on the one hand, from a 
prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a character ; and, on the 
other, an inward sympathy with the enemy. We have only to suppose society 
innocent, and then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would be like a stone that falls 
in snow, making no sound, because exciting no resistance ; the remainder rests 
on its being an offence against the good manners of human nature itself. 

“This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit, 
drollery, fancy, and even humour ; and we have only to regret the misalliance ; 
but that the latter are quite distinct from the former, may be made evident by 
abstracting in our imagination the morality of the characters of Mr. Shandy, 
my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are all antagonists to this spurious sort of 
wit, from the rest of ‘ Tristram Shandy,’ and by supposing, instead of them, 
the presence of two or three callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust. 
Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus using the best dispositions 
of our nature as the panders and condiments for the basest.” — Coleridge. 
Literary Remains, vol. i. pp. 141, 142. 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 6oi 

leer out of the leaves constantly ; the last words the famous author 
wrote were bad and wicked — the last lines the poor stricken wretch 
penned were for pity and pardon. I think of these past writers 
and of one who lives amongst us now, and am grateful for the 
innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which the 
author of “ David Copperfield ” gives to my children. 


“ Jete sur cette boulo. 

Laid, chetif et souffrant ; 
Etouff^ dans la foulo, 

Faute d’etre assez grand : 

Une plainte touchante 
De ma bouche sortit. 

Le bon Dieu me dit : Chante, 
Chante, pauvre petit ! 

Chanter ou je m’abuse, 

Est ma tacbe ici-bas. 

Tons ceux qu’ainsi j’amuse 
Ne m’aimeront-ils pas ? ” 


In those charming lines of Bdranger, one may fancy described 
the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, 
and the esteem in which we hold him. Who', of the millions whom 
he has amused, doesn’t love him 'I To be the most beloved of 
English writers, what a title that is for a man ! * A wild youth, 
wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country 
village, where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in 
idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and 
achieve name and fortune : and after years of dire struggle, and 
neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native 
place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, 
he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings 
of home : he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and 

* “ He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never forgets 
what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling distinguishes 
whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition 
which knew no bounds but his last guinea. . . . 

‘ ' The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing 
truth with which the principal characters are designed, make the * Vicar of 
Wakefield ’ one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which 
the human mind was ever employed. 

"... We read the ‘ Vicar of Wakefield ’ in youth and in age — we return 
to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well 
to reconcile us to human nature.” — Sir Walter Scott. 


602 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. 
Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and 
dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant ; in repose it longs 
for change : as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. 
He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing 
yesterday’s elegy ; and he would fly away this hour, but that a 
cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his verse, of 
his style, and humour 1 His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, 
his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns 1 
Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the 
day’s battle, and thio sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm 
the kind vagrant harper 1 Whom did he ever hurt ? He carries 
no weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you ; and with 
which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains 
in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children 
in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple 
songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of the “Vicar of 
Wakefield ” * he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet 

* “ Now Herder came,” says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his first 
acquaintance with Goldsmith’s masterpiece, ‘ ‘ and together with his great know- 
ledge brought many other aids, and the later publications besides. Among 
these he announced to us the ‘ Vicar of Wakefield ’ as an excellent work, with 
the German translation of which he would make us acquainted by reading it 
aloud to us himself. . . . 

‘ ‘ A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful subject for 
a modern idyl ; he appears like Melchizedeck, as priest and king in one person. 
To the most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth, to that of a 
husbandman, he is, for the most part, united by similarity of occupation as 
well as by equality in family relationships ; he is a father, a master of a family, 
an agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the community. On this pure, 
beautiful earthly foundation rests his higher calling ; to him is it given to guide 
men through life, to take care of their spiritual education, to bless them at all 
the leading epochs of their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, 
and, if consolation is not sufficient for the present, to call up and guarantee the 
hope of a happier future. Imagine such a man with pure human sentiments, 
strong enough not to deviate from them under any circumstances, and by this 
already elevated above the multitude of whom one cannot expect purity and 
firmness ; give him the learning necessary for his office, as well as a cheerful, 
equable activity, which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do good 
— and you will have him well endowed. But at the same time add the necessary 
limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small circle, but may also, per- 
chance, pass over to a smaller ; grant him good-nature, placability, resolution, 
and everything else praiseworthy that springs from a decided character, and 
over all this a cheerful spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of his own 
failings and those of others, — then you will have put together pretty well the 
Image of our excellent Wakefield. 

‘ ‘ The delineation of this character on his course of life through joys and 
sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the combination of the 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


603 


in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice 
in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the 
charm of his delightful music. 

Goldsmith’s father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom 
we all of us know.* Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver 

entirely natural with the strange and the singular, make this novel one of the 
best which have ever been written ; besides this, it has the great advantage that 
it is quite moral, nay, in a pure sense, Christian — represents the reward of a 
good-will and perseverance in the right, strengthens an unconditional confidence 
in God, and attests the final triumph of good over evil ; and all this without a 
trace of cant or pedantry. The author was preserved from both of these by an 
elevation of mind that shows itself throughout in the form of irony, by which 
this little work must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The author. Dr. 
Goldsmith, has, without question, a great insight into the moral world, into its 
strength and its infirmities ; but at the same time he can thankfully acknowledge 
that he is an Englishman, and reckon highly the advantages which his country 
and his nation afford him. The family, with the delineation of which he occupies 
himself, stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes in 
contact with the highest ; its narrow circle, which becomes still more contracted, 
touches upon the great world through the natural and civil course of things ; 
this little skiff floats on the agitated waves of English life, and in weal or woe it 
has to expect injury or help from the vast fleet which sails around it. 

“ I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have it in memory ; 
whoever hears it named for the first time here, as well as he who is induced to 
read it again, will thank me.’’ — Goethe. Truth and Poetry ; from my own 
Life. (English Translation, vol. i. pp. 378, 379.) 

“ He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one 
bright, the other blundering ; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the 
' good people ’ who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion on the banks 
of the Inny. “ He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so term 
it, throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school, academy, or 
college ; they unfit him for close study and practi'cal science, and render him 
heedless of everything that does not address itself to his poetical imagination 
and genial and festive feelings ; they dispose him to break away from restraint, 
to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial 
companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy in quest of odd adventures. . . . 
Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they 
never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for 
humour, and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought 
him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind ; but he discriminated between 
their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole 
store fanfiliar features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings.” 
— Washington Irving. 

* “The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally written, 
Gouldsmith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and seems always to have 
held a respectable station in society. Its origin is English, supposed to be 
derived from that which was long settled at Crayford in Kent.”— Prior’s Life 
of Goldsmith. 

Oliver’s father, great-grandfather, and. great-great-grandfather were clergy- 
men ; and two of them married clergymen’s daughters. 


604 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in 
Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child’s birth, Charles 
Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county Westmeath, 
that sweet “ Auburn ” which every person who hears me has seen 
in fancy. Here the kind parson * brought up his eight children ; 
and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world 
loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides those 
hungry children. He kept an open table ; round which sat flatterers 
and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector’s many jokes, 
and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have 
seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy that one of Lissoy. 
The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf ; the 
maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and buttermilk ; the poor 
cottier still asks his honour’s charity, and prays God bless his 
reverence for the sixpence ; the ragged pensioner still takes his 
place by right and sufferance. There’s still a crowd in the kitchen, 
and a crowd round the parlour table, profusion, confusion, kindness, 
poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he 
has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a percentage of his 
earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith f left but little provision 
for his hungry race when death summoned him ; and one of his 

* "At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 

His looks adorn’d the venerable place ; 

Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway, 

And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray. 

The service past, around the pious man, 

With steady zeal each honest rustic ran ; 

E’en children follow’d with endearing wile, 

And pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile. | 

His ready smile a parent’s warmth exprest, i 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ; | 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, | 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, I 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm. 

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread. 

Eternal sunshine settles on its head .” — The Deserted Village. 

t " In May this year (1768), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, 
for whom he had been unable to obtain preferment in the Church. ... ’ 

"... To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the moderate stipend of which, i 
forty pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother’s lines. It has f 
been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which, after having been held ! 
at more than one place in the vicinity, was finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his I 
talents and industry gave it celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of ! 
the neighbouring gentry received their education. A fever breaking out among [ 
the boys about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but re-assembling at Athlone, S 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 605 

daughters being engaged to a Squire of rather superior dignity, 
Charles Goldsmith impoverished the rest of his family to provide 
the girl with a dowry. 

The smallpox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and 
ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor 
little Oliver’s face, when the child was eight years old, and left him 
scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father’s 
village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce : Paddy 
Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand : and from Paddy 
Byrne he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a 
child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that 
he was placed under Mr. So-and-so’s ferule. Poor little ancestors ! 
It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched ; and how 
much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to 
undergo ! A relative — kind uncle Contarine — took the main charge 
of little Noll ; who went through his schooldays righteously doing 
as little work as he could : robbing orchards, playing at ball, and 
making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to 
him. Everybody knows the story of that famous “Mistake of a 
Night,” when the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a 
nag, rode up to the “ best house ” in Ardagh, called for the land- 
lord’s company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake 
for breakfast in the morning; and found, when he asked for the 
bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone’s, and not the inn 
for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about 
Goldsmith % That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child 
dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old 
fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness, and called him jEsop ; and 
little Noll made his repartee of “ Heralds proclaim aloud this saying 
— See .Esop dancing and his monkey playing.” One can fancy a 
queer pitiful look of humour and appeal upon that little scarred 
face — the funny little dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In 
his life, and his writings, which are the honest expression of it, he 
is constantly bewailing that homely face and person ; anon he surveys 
them in the glass ruefully ; and presently assumes the most comical 


he continued his scholastic labours there until the time of his death, which 
happened, like that of his brother, about the forty-fifth year of his age. He 
was a man of an excellent heart and an amiable disposition.” — Prior’s 
Goldsmith. 

" Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, 

My heart, untra veil’d, fondly turns to thee : 

Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain. 

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. ” 

— The Traveller. 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


606 

dignity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendour and 
fine colours. He presented himself to be examined for ordination 
in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like 
to go into the Church, because he was fond of coloured clothes. 
When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook 
a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and 
kept his hat over a patch on the old coat : in better days he bloomed 
out in plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of 
those splendours the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, 
have never been paid to this day : perhaps the kind tailor and his 
creditor have met and settled their little account in Hades.* 

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College,! Dublin, 
on which the name of 0. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. 
Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar’s, who made but a 
poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and 
Wd of pleasure : J he learned his way early to the pawnbroker’s 
shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid 
him a crown for a poem : and his pleasure was to steal out at night 
and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving 
a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, 
that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, 
and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to 
go to America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal 
came home ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf — it 
was but a lean one — and welcomed him back. 

After college he hung about his mother’s house, and lived for 
some years the life of a buckeen — passed a month with this relation 
and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at the public- 
house.§ Tired of this life, it was resolved that he should go to 
London, and study at the Temple ; but he got no farther on the 
road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled 

* “ When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William 
Filby (amounting in all to £7^)) was for clothes supplied to this nephew 
Hodson.” — Forster’s Goldsmith, p. 520. 

As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) "a prosperous 
Irish gentleman,” it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off Mr, 
Filby’s bill. 

+ [The pane is still preserved in the library of Trinity College,] 

X “ Poor fellow ! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a 
goose, but when he saw it on the table.” — Cumberland’s Memoirs. 

§ “ These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often disturb the 
mind only in order to its future refinement : a life spent in phlegmatic apathy 
resembles those liquors which never ferment, and are consequently always 
muddy. ” — Goldsmith. Memoir of Voltaire. 

“He [Johnson] said ‘Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There 
appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.’ ” — Boswell. 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


607 


away the fifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and whence he 
returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he deter- 
mined to be a doctor, and uncle Contarine helped him to a couple 
of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he 
ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote 
most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, 
Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed 
to follow. If uncle Contarine believed those letters — if Oliver’s 
mother believed that story which the youth related of his going 
to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America, of his having 
paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board ; of the 
anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver’s valuable luggage in 
a nameless ship, never to return ; if uncle Contarine and the 
mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been 
a very simple pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who 
cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical examina- 
tion, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave of 
these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw 
mother, and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf, 
and sparkling river for the last time. He was never to look on old 
Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her. 

“ But me not destined such delights to share, 

My prime of life in wandering spent and care, 

Impelled, with steps unceasing to pursue 
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view ; 

That like the circle bounding earth and skies 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies : 

My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 

And find no spot of all the world my own." 

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled 
Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain 
a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benevolence and love of 
truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided to him for the 
public benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for their honour- 
able employ ; and a constancy equally happy and admirable I think 
was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed 
kindly always in the midst of a life’s storm, and rain, and bitter 
weather.* The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could 

* “An ‘inspired idiot,’ Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [Johnson]. 

Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the ‘gooseberry fool,’ but rather 
much good; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson’s ; and all the more 
genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it,— though unhappily 
never cease attempting to become so: the author of the genuine ‘Vicar of 
Wakefield,’ nill he will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine 
manhood.’’— C arlyle’s Essays (2nd ed.), vol. iv. p. 91. 


6o8 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

befriend some one ; never so pinched and wretched but he could 
give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had 
but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy 
in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer 
coal-scuttle we read of to his poor neighbour : he could give away 
his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as 
he best might in the feathers : he could pawn his coat to save 
his landlord from gaol : when he was a school-usher he spent his 
earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured schoolmaster’s 
wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith’s money as 
well as the young gentlemen’s. When he met his pupils in later 
life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them 
still. “ Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds 1 ” 
he asked of one of his old pupils. “Not seen it ? not bought it 1 
Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I’d not have been 
without it half-an-hour.” His purse and his heart were every- 
body’s, and his friends’ as much as his own. When he was at 
the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, 
going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any 
service to Doctor Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, 
and not himself, to the great man. “ My patrons,” he gallantly 
said, “are the booksellers, and I want no others.”* Hard 
patrons they were, and hard work he did; but he did not 
complain much : if in his early writings some bitter words escaped 
him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these 
expressions when his works were republished, and better days seemed j 
to open for him ; and he did not care to complain that printer or { 
publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court 
face was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronised Beattie ; Ij 

* "At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great for jj 
subsistence ; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the public; | 
collectively considered, is a good and generous master. It is indeed too fre- ^ 
quently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for favour ; but to make ii 
amends it is never mistaken long. A performance indeed may be forced for a ( 
time into reputation, but, destitute of real merit, it soon sinks ; time, the touch- 
stone of what is truly valuable, will soon discover the fraud, and an author i 
should never arrogate to himself any share of success till his works have been i 
read at least ten years with satisfaction. Ij 

" A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly sensible j 
of their value. Every polite member of the community, by buying what he ^ 
writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of living in a ji 
garret might have been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, “i 
because no longer true. A writer of real merit now may easily be rich, if his !' 
heart be set only on fortune; and for those who have no merit, it is but fit j' 
that such should remain in merited obscurity.” — Goldsmith. Citizen of the I 
World, Let. 84. j 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


609 

the fashion did not shine on him — fashion adored Sterne.* Fashion 
pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A 
little — not ill-humour, but plaintiveness — a little betrayal of 
wounded pride which he showed render him not the less amiable. 
The author of the “Vicar of Wakefield” had a right to protest 
when Newbery kept back the manuscript for two years ; had a 
right to be a little peevish "with Sterne ; a little angry when Col- 
man’s actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy, when the 
manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its 
damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him ; 
but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the 
great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the great Fox — friends and 
admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years 
before, sat round Pope’s table. 

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith’s buoyant temper 
kept no account of, all the pains which he endured during the early 
period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day 
have to bear up against such. Heaven grant he may come out of 
the period of misfortune with such a pure kind heart as that which 
Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The insults to which he 
had to submit are shocking to read of — slander, contumely, vulgar 
satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and 
actions ; he had his share of these, and one’s anger is roused at 
reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child 
assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, 

* Goldsmith attacked Sterne obviously enough,^ censuring his indecency, 
and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the 53rd letter in the 
" Citizen of the World.” , 

" As in common conversation,” says he, “the best way to make the audience 
laugh is by first laughing yourself ; so in writing, the properest manner is to 
show an attempt at humour, which will pass upon most for humour in reality. 
To effect this, readers must be treated with the most perfect familiarity ; in one 
page the author is to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the 
nose ; he must talk in riddles, and then send them to bed in order to dream for 
the solution,” &c. 

Sterne’s humourous mot on the subject of the gravest part of the charges, 
then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here, from the excel- 
lent, the respectable Sir Walter Scott : — 

“Soon after ‘Tristram’ had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of 
fortune and condition, whether she had read his book. ‘ I have not, Mr. 
Sterne,’ was the answer ; ‘ and to be plain with you, I am informed it is not 
proper for female perusal.’ ' My dear good lady,’ replied the author, ‘ do not 
be gulled by such stories ; the book is like your young heir there ’ (pointing to 
a child of three years old, who was rolling on the carpet in his white tunic) ; 
‘ he shows at times a good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect 
innocence.’ ” 

7 2 Q 


6lO ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

and full of love, should have had to suffer so. And he had worse 
than insult to undergo — to own to fault and deprecate the anger of 
ruffians. There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a book- 
seller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain 
books sent by Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom 
Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money. “ He was wild, sir,” 
Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, 
wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart — “ Dr. Goldsmith 
was wild, sir ; but he is so no more.” Ah ! if we pity the good 
and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently 
with him from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame ; let 
us think humbly and charitably of the human nature that suffers so 
sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be to-morrow ? What 
weak heart, confident before trial, may not succumb under tempta- 
tion invincible ? Cover the good man "who has been vanquished — 
cover his face and pass on. 

For the last half-dozen years of his life. Goldsmith was far re- 
moved from the pressure of any ignoble necessity : and in the receipt, 
indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers his patrons. 
Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have 
been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed 
alive a part of that esteem which his country has ever since paid 
to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every 
subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. 
Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession, and 
esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which 
trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the 
strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for 
backers and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time,* 
fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had 
fate so willed it, and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him 
off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable 
that no sum could have put order into his affairs, or sufficed for his 
irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he 
owed £2000 when he died. “Was ever poet,” Johnson asked, 

* "Goldsmith told us that he was now busy in writing a Natural History; 
and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings at a farmer’s 
house, near to the six-mile stone in the Edgware Road, and had carried down 
his books in two returned post-chaises. He said he believed the farmer’s family 
thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared 
to his landlady and her children ; he was The Gentleman. Mr. Mickle, the 
translator of the Lusiad, and I, went to visit him at this place a few days after- 
wards. He was not at home ; but having a curiosity to see his apartment, we 
went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the 
wall with a blacklead pencil." — Boswell, 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 6Ti 

“ so trusted before 1 ” As has been the case with many another 
good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance 
wasted by crowds of hungry beggars and lazy dex)endants. If they 
came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than 
he did himself, and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his 
money : if they begged on empty-purse days, he gave them his 
promissory bills : or he treated them to a tavern where he had 
credit ; or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for 
coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the 
shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under 
a load of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful 
creditors, running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing 
looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising 
fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts 
of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out 
of seclusion into pleasure — at last, at five-and-forty, death seized 
him and closed his career.* I have been many a time in the 
chambers in the Temple w^hich were his, and passed up the stair- 
case, which Johnson and Burke and Reynolds trod to see their 
friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith — the stair on which the 
poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the 
greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black 
oak door.t Ah ! it was a different lot from that for which 
the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for 

* “When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ‘Your pulse is in 
greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you have ; 
is your mind at ease?’ Goldsmith answered it was not.” — Dr. Johnson {in 
Boswell). ' 

“ Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much further. 
He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had 
raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of 
expense. But let not his failings be remembered ; he was a very great man.” — 
Dr. Johnson to Boswell, July 5th, 1774. 

f “When Burke was told [of Goldsmith’s death] he burst into tears. 
Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him ; but 
at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family distress he 
had not been known to do, left his painting-room, and did not re-enter it that 
day. . . . 

“The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, the 
reverse of domestic ; women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, 
with no friend but him they had come to weep for; outcasts of that great, 
solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. 
And he had domestic mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of 
Miss Horneck and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for 
them !) that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn’s possession 
when she died, after nearly seventy years.” — Forster’s Goldsmith. 


6n ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies 
he revisits Auburn : — 

“ Here, as I take my solitary rounds, 

Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, 

And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 

Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, 

Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care. 

In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 

I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 

To husband out life’s taper at the close, 

And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 

I still had hopes— for pride attends us still — 

Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill. 

Around my Are an evening group to draw. 

And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 

And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. 

Pants to the place from whence at first he flew — 

I still had hopes, my long vexations past. 

Here to return, and die at home at last. 

0 blest retirement, friend to life’s decline ! 

Retreats from care that never must be mine — 

How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 

A youth of labour with an age of ease ; 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try. 

And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 

For him no wretches born to work and weep 
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep ; 

No surly porter stands in guilty state 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate : 

But on he moves to meet his latter end, 

Angels around befriending virtue’s friend ; 

Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay. 

Whilst resignation gently slopes the way ; 

And all his prospects brightening to the last. 

His heaven commences ere the world be past.” 

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what 
touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison — as 
indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest soul — 
the whole character of the man is told — his humble confession of 
faults and weakness ; his pleasant little vanity, and desire that his 
village should admire him ; his simple scheme of good in which 
everybody was to be happy— no beggar was to be refused his dinner 
— nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


613 


chief of the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He 
would have told again, and without fear of their failing, those 
famous jokes * which had hung fire in London ; he would have 
talked of his great friends of the Club — of my Lord Clare and my 
Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent — sure he knew them intimately, 

* " Goldsmith’s incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was the 
occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one should hardly 
have supposed possible in a man of his genius. When his literary reputation had 
risen deservedly high, and his society was much courted, he became very jealous 
of the extraordinary attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson. One 
evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as 
entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, ‘ Sir,’ said he, ‘ you are 
for making a monarchy of what should be a republic.’ 

“ He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent vivacity, 
and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all present, a German who sat 
next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself as if about to speak, suddenly 
stopped him, saying, ‘ Stay, stay — Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.’ 
This was no doubt very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, 
who frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation. 

“ It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be 
treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential and 
important. An instance of this occurred in a small particular. Johnson had a 
way of contracting the names of his friends, as Beau clerk. Beau ; Boswell, 
Bozzy. ... I remember one day, when Tom Davies was telling that Doctor 
Johnson said — ‘ We are all in labour for a name to Goldy’s play,’ Goldsmith 
seemed displeased that such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, 
‘ I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.’ ” 

This is one of several of Boswell’s depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith — 
which may well irritate biographers and admirers, and also those who take 
that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell’s own character, which 
was opened up by Mr. Carlyle’s famous article on his book. No wonder that 
Mr. Irving calls Boswell an “incarnation of toadyism.” And the worst of it 
is, that Johnson himself has suffered from this habit of the Laird of Auchin- 
leck’s. People are apt to forget under what Boswellian stimulus the great 
Doctor uttered many hasty things : — things no more indicative of the nature 
of the depths of his character than the phosphoric gleaming of the sea, when 
struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of nature ! In truth, it is 
clear enough on the whole that both Johnson and Goldsmith appreciated each 
other, and that they mutually knew it. They were, as it were, tripped up and 
flung'against each other, occasionally, by the blundering and silly gambolling 
of people in company. 

Something must be allowed for Boswell’s “rivalry for Johnson’s good graces” 
with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for Oliver was intimate with the 
Doctor before his biographer was,— and, as we all remember, marched off with 
him to “take tea with Mrs. Williams” before Boswell had advanced to that 
honourable degree of intimacy. But, in truth, Boswell though he perhaps 
showed more talent in his delineation of the Doctor than is generally ascribed 

to him had not faculty to take a fair view of two great men at a time. Besides, 

as Mr. Forster justly remarks, “ he was impatient of Goldsmith from the first 
hour of their acquaintance.” — Life and Adventures, p. 292. 


614 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 

and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town — and 
he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua 
who had painted him — and he would have told wonderful sly stories 
of Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame 
Cornelys ; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the J essamy 
Bride — the lovely Mary Horneck. 

The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the 
prettiest recollections of Goldsmith’s life. She and her beautiful 
sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur 
artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun to try his 
powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Goldsmith’s many 
friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him, made 
him welcome at their home, and gave him many a pleasant holiday. 
He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country-house at 
Barton — he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at 
him, played him tricks and made him happy. He asked for a loan 
from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to 
go to Barton : but there were to be no inore holidays and only one 
brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith. A lock of his hair was 
taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived 
quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but beautiful 
still, in Northcote’s painting-room, who told the eager critic how 
proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The 
younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him (vol. i. 
63, 64) 

“ I was only five years old,” he says, “ when Goldsmith took 
me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my 
father, and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned, 
with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart 
slap on the face : it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks 
of my spiteful paw on his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed 
by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father 
in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. 
Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no 
bad step towards my liberation, since those who were not inclined 
to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating 
a nuisance. 

“At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from 
jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had 
so wantonly molested by assault and battery — it was the tender- 
hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand and a 
smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the 
effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed as he fondled and 
soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious 







c 


GOLDSMITH AT PLAY. 








STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 


615 


moment of returning good-humour, when he put down the candle 
and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to 
be in the room, and a shilling under each. The shillings, he told 
me, were England, France, and Spain. ‘ Hey presto cockalorum ! ’ 
cried the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had 
been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found 
congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and 
therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which 
brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but as 
also I was no conjurer, it amazed me beyond measure. . . . From 
that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, ‘ I plucked 
his gown to share the good man’s smile ; ’ a game at romps con- 
stantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry play- 
fellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports 
as I grew older ; but it did not last long : my senior playmate died 
in his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh. ... In 
all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and 
absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his 
‘ compassion for another’s woe ’ was always predominant ; and my 
trivial story of his humouring a froward child weighs but as a feather 
in the recorded scale of his benevolence.” 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain, if you like — but merciful, 
gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, 
and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor 
pensioners weeping at his grave ; think of the noble spirits that 
admired and deplored him ; think of the righteous pen that wrote 
his epitaph — and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affec- 
tion with which the w^orld has paid back, the love he gave it. His 
humour delighting us still : his song fresh and beautiful as when 
first he charmed with it : his words in all our mouths : his very 
weaknesses beloved and familiar — his benevolent spirit seems still 
to smile upon us ; to do gentle kindnesses : to succour with sweet 
charity : to soothe, caress, and forgive : to plead with the fortunate 
for the unhappy and the poor. 

His name is the last in the list of those men of humour who 
have formed the themes of the discourses which you have heard 
so kindly. 

Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or dreamed 
of the possibility of the good fortune which has brought me so many 
friends, I was at issue with some of my literary brethren upon a 
point which they held from tradition I think rather than experi- 

ence — that our profession was neglected in this country ; and that 
men of letters were ill received and held in slight esteem. It would 


6l6 


ENGLISH HUMOURISTS 


hardly be grateful of me now to alter my old opinion that we do 
meet with good-will and kindness, with generous helping hands in 
the time of our necessity, with cordial and friendly recognition. 
What claim had any one of these of wliom I have been speaking, 
but genius'? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not 
bring to all '? 

What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them, 
but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives '? For these 
faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in 
debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears the coat ; his children 
must go in rags if he spends his money at the tavern ; he can’t 
come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the 
road and gambles away his last shilling at Dublin. And he must 
pay the social penalty of these follies too, and expect that the world 
will shun the man of bad liabits, that women will avoid the man of 
loose life, that prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, 
and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy 
prodigal. With what difficulty had any one of these men to contend, 
save that eternal and mechanical one of want of means and lack of 
capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, young doctors, 
young soldiers and sailors, of inventors, manufacturers, shopkeepers, 
have to complain ? Hearts as brave and resolute as ever beat in 
the breast of any wit or poet, sicken and break daily in the vain 
endeavour and unavailing struggle against life's difficulty. Don’t 
we see daily ruined inventors, grey-haired midshipmen, balked 
heroes, blighted curates, barristers pining a hungry life out in 
chambers, the attorneys never mounting to their garrets, whilst 
scores of them are rapping at the door of the successful quack 
below? If these suffer, who is the author, that he should be 
exempt ? Let us bear our ills with the same constancy with which 
others endure them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, 
and ask no more. I can conceive of no kings or laws causing or 
curing Goldsmith’s improvidence, or Fielding’s fatal love of pleasure, 
or Dick Steele’s mania for running races with the constable. You 
never can outrun that sure-footed officer — not by any swiftness or 
by dodges devised by any genius, however great ; and he carries off 
the Tatler to the spunging-house, or taps the Citizen of the World 
on the shoulder as he would any other mortal. 

Does society look down on a man because he is an author? 
I suppose if people want a buffoon they tolerate him only in so 
far as he is amusing ; it can hardly be expected that they should 
respect him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honour pro- 
vided for the author of the last new novel or poem ? how long is he 
to reign, and keep other potentates out of possession ? He retires, 


STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 6l7 

grumbles, and prints a lamentation that literature is despised. If 
Captain A. is left out of Lady B.’s parties, he does not state that 
the army is despised : if Lord C. no longer asks Counsellor D. 
to dinner. Counsellor D. does not announce that the bar is in- 
sulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it with this suspicion 
hankering about him ; if he is doubtful about his reception, how 
hold up his head honestly, and look frankly in the face that world 
about which he is full of suspicion? Is he place-hunting, and 
thinking in his mind that he ought to be made an Ambassador 
like Prior, or a Secretary of State like Addison? his pretence 
of equality falls to the ground at once ; he is scheming for a patron, 
not shaking the hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat 
such a man as he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give him 
a dinner and a hon jmir ; laugli at his self-sufficiency and absurd 
assumptions of superiority, and his equally ludicrous airs of martyr- 
dom : laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, if it’s worth 
the having. Let the wag have his dinner and the hireling his pay, 
if you want him, and make a profound bow to the grand homme 
incompris, and the boisterous martyr, and show him the door. The 
great world, the great aggregate experience, has its good sense, as it 
has its good humour. It detects a pretender, as it trusts a loyal 
heart. It is kind in the main ; how should it be otherwise than 
kind, wdien it is so wise and clear-headed? To any literary man 
who says, “ It despises my profession,” I say, with all my might — 
no, no, no. It may pass over your individual case — how many a 
brave fellow has failed in the race and perished unknown in the 
struggle ! — but it treats , you as you merit in the main. If you 
serve it, it is not unthankfiil ; if you please it, it is pleased ; if you 
cringe to it, it detects you, and scorns you if you are mean ; it 
returns your cheerfulness with its good humour; it deals not un- 
generously with your weaknesses; it recognises most kindly your 
merits ; it gives you a fair place and fair play. To any one of those 
men of whom we have spoken was it in the main ungrateful ? A 
king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a publisher might keep 
his masterpiece and the delight of all the world in his desk for two 
years ; but it was mistake, and not ill-will. Noble and illustrious 
names of Swift, and Pope, and Addison ! dear and honoured 
memories of Goldsmith and Fielding ! kind friends, teachers, bene- 
factors ! who shall say that our country, which continues to bring 
you such an unceasing tribute of applause, admiration, love, sym- 
pathy, does not do honour to the literary calling in the honour which 
it bestows upon you ? 




wy 



• I' 


57; ■ TTli' 





^ • 




'I i<5!} /I 

s ■ I '. 

: . !,t n 


*f * »•*>■» I • 4 *1 • H' 

*•"' •loi'i’i' ,it -,>i' 


# \ 

t 4 


^ 'I? 


< I 

< I 


^ I ■ ,' ' ^ 


I ii 

• f 


0 , .. 


‘ i' 1 . • > f 


r 


f •« 


* i • • ^ • 


f » ' 


’ I f\- 


V 


rrt yirj 
,1* ’;i>;/ ♦ 




' . -J.'- (>f' 


. ' ill h ij( . 7 .' 

' y-,'i !■ ■ • •* ■ 


1 I 

I 


1 





^ ^ • 

A ^,, 

f 4**^ * 

fl .' 


1. ^ . 
< • 

> ♦ . 1 

r ' 

'■■ '* },^^f^■!^ ■• 

r'Mfli 

..' J, 

“1 


; ^ • .<.. .‘. - . / '., 

i* '* 

Ta^>^A st 

t . 


« • % 

1 1 < V' i, 

■ 

A • 

• 

' : 1. »j- 

t 

* . 

^ 

* p. ' 1 '• If ' . 

I 

« •■ f 

<:l'\j xi 

ft. 

:lr 

ft 



1 


A * • 


I 


-V ,r 


I / 



^ ' f.Ti 



THE rOUE GEORGES 

SKETCHES OF MANNERS, MORALS, 
COURT AND TOWN LIFE 



THE FOUR GEORGES 


GEORGE THE FIRST 


A very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady who had 
been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been 
patted on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at 
Doctor Johnson’s door; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful 
Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the 
reign of George III. ; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the 
patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the Court 
of Queen Anne. I often thought, as I took my kind old friend’s 
hand, how with it I held on to the old society of wits and men of 
the world. I could travel back for sevenscore years of time — have 
glimpses of Brummel, Selwyn, Chesterfield, and the men of pleasure ; 
of Walpole and Conway; of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith; of North, 
Chatham, Newcastle ; of the fair maids of honour of George II. ’s 
Court; of the German retainers of George I.’s; where Addison 
was Secretary of State ; where Dick Steele held a place ; whither 
the great Marlborough came with his fiery spouse ; when Pope, and 
Swift, and Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, 
busy, brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a com- 
plete notion; but we may peep here and there into that bygone 
world of the Georges, see what they and their Courts were like; 
glance at the people round about them ; look at past manners, 
fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have to 
say thus much by way of preface, because the subject of these 
lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task 
for not having given grave historical treatises, which it never was 
my intention to attempt. Not about battles, about politics, about 
statesmen and measures of State, did I ever think to lecture you : 
but to sketch the manners and life of the old world ; to amuse for 
a few hours with talk about the old society ; and, with the result 


622 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


of many a day’s and night’s pleasant reading, to try and while away 
a few winter evenings for my hearers. 

Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wittenberg 
was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Llineburg, 
was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian House at present 
reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held his Court at Celle, 
a little town of ten thousand people that lies on the railway line 
between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst of great plains of 
sand, upon the river Aller. When Duke William had it, it was a 
very humble wood-built place, with a great brick church, which he 
sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his house lie 
buried. He was a very religious lord, and was called William the 
Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate 
deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter 
days, the good Duke had glimpses of mental light, when he 
would bid his musicians play the psalm-tunes which he loved. 
One thinks of a descendant of his, two hundred years after- 
wards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel in Windsor 
Tower. 

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and 
seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, drew 
lots to determine which one of them should marry, and continue 
the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke George, the 
sixth brother. The others remained single, or contracted left- 
handed marriages after the princely fashion of those days. It is 
a queer picture — that of the old Prince dying in his little wood-built 
capital, and his seven sons tossing up which should inherit and 
transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke George, the lucky prize- 
man, made the tour of Europe, during which he visited the Court 
of Queen Elizabeth ; and in the year 1617, came back and settled 
at Zell, with a wife out of Darmstadt. His remaining brothers 
all kept their liouse at Zell, for economy’s sake. And presently, 
in due course, they all died — all the honest Dukes : Ernest, and 
Christian, and Augustus, and Magnus, and George, and John — 
and they are buried in the brick church of Brentford yonder, by the 
sandy banks of the Aller. 

Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our 
Dukes in Zell. “ When the trumpeter on the tower has blown,” 
Duke Christian orders — viz., at nine o’clock in the morning, and 
four in the evening — every one must be present at meals, and those 
who are not must go without. None of the servants, unless it be 
a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat or drink in the 
kitchen or cellar ; or, without special leave, fodder his horses at the 


623 


GEORGE THE FIRST 

Prince’s cost. When the meal is served in the Court-room, a page 
shall go round and bid every one be quiet and orderly, forbidding 
all cursing, swearing, and rudeness; all throwing about of bread, 
bones, or roast, or pocketing of the same. Every morning, at 
seven, the squires shall have their morning soup, along with which, 
and dinner, they shall be served with their under-drink — every 
morning, except Friday morning, when there was sermon, and no 
drink. Every evening they shall have their beer, and at night 
their sleep-drink. The butler is especially warned not to allow 
noble or simple to go into the cellar : wine shall only be served at 
the Prince’s or Councillor’s table ; and every Monday, the honest 
old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the 
expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and 
stable, made out. 

Duke George, the marrying Duke, did not stop at home to 
partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about 
fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served as 
general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Protes- 
tant army; then he went over to the Emperor, and fought in 
his armies in Germany and Italy; and when Gustavus Adolphus 
appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish general, 
and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim, as his share of the plunder. 
Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving four sons 
behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our Royal 
Georges. 

Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing simple 
ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The second brother 
was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a jolly wicked life there. 
It was the most jovial of all places at ihe end of the seventeenth 
century ; and military men, after a campaign, rushed thither, as the 
warriors of the Allies rushed to Paris in 1814, to gamble, and 
rejoice, and partake of all sorts of godless delights. This prince, 
then, loving Venice and its pleasures, brought Italian singers and 
dancers back with him to quiet old Zell ; and, worse still, demeaned 
himself by marrying a French lady of birth quite inferior to his 
own — Eleanor d’Olbreuse, from whom our Queen is descended. 
Eleanoi had a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, 
which inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire 
to marry her ; and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came 
to a sad end. 

It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George divided 
his territories amongst them, and how, finally, they came into 
possession of the son of the youngest of the four. In'this genera- 
tion the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in the 


624 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


family : and then where should we in England have gone for a 
king? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where the 
priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too. Mass was 
said in Hanover once more ; and Italian soprani piped their Latin 
rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious and Doctor 
Luther sang. Louis XIV. gave this and other converts a splendid 
pension. Crowds of Frenchmen and brilliant French fashions came 
to his Court. It is incalculable how much that Royal bigwig cost 
Germany. Every prince imitated the French King, and had his 
Versailles, his Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigslust; his Court and its 
splendours ; his gardens laid out with statues ; his fountains, and 
waterworks, and Tritons ; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and 
fiddlers ; his harem, with its inhabitants ; his diamonds and duchies 
for these latter ; his enormous festivities, his gaming-tables, tourna- 
ments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long, for which 
the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it ; 
with their bodies and very blood when they had none ; being sold 
in thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers, 
staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table ; swapped a 
battalion against a dancing-girFs diamond necklace ; and, as it were, 
pocketed their people. 

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel, in 
the early part of the last century, the landscape is awful — wretched 
wastes, beggarly and plundered ; half-burned cottages and trembling 
peasants gatliering piteous harvests : gangs of such tramping along 
with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of- 
nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By tliese passes my Lord’s 
gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as he swears at the 
postillions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but away from 
the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is Wilhelmslust 
or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles — it scarcely matters 
which, — near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared 
country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, 
where the Prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and 
huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beat- 
ing the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather) ; and the 
jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold ; and 
the Prince gallops ahead puffing his Royal horn ; and his lords 
and mistresses ride after him ; and the stag is pulled down ; and 
the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of 
bugles ; and ’tis time the Court go home to dinner ; and our noble 
traveller, it may be the Baron of Pollnitz, or the Count de Konigs- 
marck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession 
gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to 


GEORGE THE FIRST 


625 


the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the Court. 
Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and 
silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamber- 
lain, and makes his bow to the jolly Prince, and the gracious 
Princess ; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then 
comes supper and a bank at Faro, where he loses or wins a thousand 
pieces by daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a 
little drunkenness to this picture of high life ; but German, or 
French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows 
beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside ; hunger 
is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious 
husbandry ; ploughing stony fields with starved cattle ; or fear- 
fully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his 
throne ; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost ; his mistress, 
Aurora von Kdnigsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature ; his 
diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his 
feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As Tor Louis the Great, 
he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and 
mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan 
from under his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great 
gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and 
Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid ; nobles and 
knights more gallant and superb ; ladies more lovely ? A grander 
monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his 
subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, 
if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the 
glory and the chivalry ? Yes ! Remember the grace and beauty, 
the splendour and lofty politeness ; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, 
where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard to 
fire first; the noble constancy of the old King and Villars his 
general, who fits out the last army with the last crownpiece from 
the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for 
France at Denain. But round all that Royal splendour lies a 
nation enslaved and ruined : there are people robbed of their 
rights — communities laid waste— faith, justice, commerce trampled 
upon, and well-nigh destroyed— nay, in the very centre of Royalty 
itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame ! It 
is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and 
some of the proudest women in the world are bowing down ; it 
is the price of a miserable province that the King ties in diamonds 
round his mistress’s white neck. In the first half of the last 
century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a 
waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger 
and not worse than Herrenhausen. 

7 2 R 


626 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate 
match which bestawed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us 
Britons. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his niece 
Sophia, one of many children of another luckless dethroned sovereign, 
the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and 
brought the reversion to the crown of the three kingdoms in her 
scanty trousseau. 

One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, 
accomplished of women was Sophia, daughter of poor Frederick, 
the winter King of Bohemia. The other daughters of lovely 
unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic Church ; this 
one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithfid to the 
Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent 
of the French King’s, Courville, a convert himself, strove to bring 
her and her husband to a sense of the truth ; and tells us that he 
one day asked Madame the Duchess of Hanover of what religion 
her daughter was, then a pretty girl of thirteen years old. The 
Duchess replied that the princess was of no religion as yet. They 
were waiting to know of what religion her husband would be, 
Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her ! And the Duke of 
Hanover having heard all Courville’s proposal, said that a change 
would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too 
old to change. 

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to 
shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which it 
appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of 
Hanover committed. He loved to take his pleasure like other 
sovereigns — was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the bottle; 
liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him : and we 
read how he jovially sold 6700 of his Hanoverians to the Seigniory 
of Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command 
of Ernest’s son. Prince Max, and only 1400 of them ever came 
home again. The German princes sold a good deal of this kind 
of stock. You may remember how George III.’s Government 
purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them during the War 
of Independence. 

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series 
of the most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial 
Prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own 
interests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself ; he married 
his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of Zell ; and sending 
his sons out in command of armies to fight — now on this side, now 
on that — he lived on, taking his pleasure, and scheming his schemes, 
a merry wise prince enough — not, I fear, a moral prince, of which 


GEORGE THE FIRST 627 

kind we shall have but very few specimens in the course of these 
lectures. 

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom 
were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of primo- 
geniture and non-division of property which' the Elector ordained. 
“Gustchen,” the Electress writes about her 'second son: — “Poor 
Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him no more keep. I 
laugh in the day, and cry all night about it ; for I am a fool 
with my children.” Three of the six died fighting against Turks, 
Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, 
leaving an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The 
daughter, of whose early education we have made mention, was 
married to the Elector of Brandenburg, and so her religion settled 
finally on the Protestant side. 

A niece of the Electress Sophia — who had been made to change 
her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French 
King ; a woman whose honest heart was always with her friends 
and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body was confined at 
Paris, or Marly, or Versailles — has left us, in her enormous corre- 
spondence (part of which has been printed in German and French), 
recollections of the Electress, and of George her son. Elizabeth 
Charlotte was at Osnaburgh when George was born (1660). She 
narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious 
day. She seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown 
up ; and represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent 
he may have been : not a jolly Prince like his father before him, 
but a prudent, quiet, selfish potentate, going his own way, manag- 
ing his own affairs, and understanding his own interests remark- 
ably well. 

In his father’s lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces 
of 8000 or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on the Danube 
against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on the Rhine. 
When he succeeded to the Electorate, he handled its affairs with 
great prudence and dexterity. He was very much liked by his 
people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings much, but he 
cried heartily on leaving them ; as they used for joy when he came 
back. He showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behaviour 
when he came into his kingdom ; exhibiting no elation ; reasonably 
doubtful whether he should not be turned out some day ; looking 
upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure 
of St. James’s and Hampton Court ; plundering, it is true, some- 
what, and dividing amongst his German followers ; but what could 
be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so 
many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing of 


628 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


them ? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and even 
moderation in his ways. The German Protestant was a cheaper, 
and better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart in whose chair 
he sat, and so far loyal to England that he let England govern 
herself. 

Having these lectures in view, I made it my business to visit 
that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old town 
of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time when George 
Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Herrenhausen are 
scarce changed since the day when the stout old Electress Sophia 
fell down in her last walk there, preceding by but a few weeks 
to the tomb James II. ’s daughter, w^hose death made way for the 
Brunswick Stuarts in England. 

The first two Royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augustus, 
had quite Royal notions regarding marriage ; and Louis XIV. and 
Charles II. scarce distinguished themselves more at Versailles or 
St. James’s than these German Sultans in their little city on the 
banks of the Leine. You may see at Herrenhausen the very rustic 
theatre in which the Platens danced and performed masques, and 
sang before the Elector and his sons. There are the very fauns and 
dryads of stone still glimmering through the branches, still grinning 
and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the days when painted 
nymphs hung garlands round them : appeared under their leafy 
arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns ; descended 
from “ machines ” in the guise of Diana or Minerva ; and delivered 
immense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from 
the campaign. 

That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe; 
a queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchical prin- 
ciple. Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its quarrels 
mth the Crown, had pretty Avell succumbed, and the monarch was 
all in all. He became almost divine : the proudest and most 
ancient gentry of the land did menial service for him. Who should 
carry Louis XIV. ’s candle when he went to bed 1 what prince of the 
blood should hold the King’s shirt when his Most Christian Majesty 
changed that garment ? — the French memoirs of the seventeenth 
century are full of such details and squabbles. The tradition is not 
yet extinct in Europe. Any of you who were present, as myriads 
were, at that splendid pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in 
London, must have seen two noble lords, great ofiicers of the house- 
hold, with ancient pedigrees, with embroidered coats, and stars on 
their breasts and wands in their hands, walking backwards for near 
the space of a mile, while the Royal procession made its progress. 
Shall we wonder— shall we be angry — shall we laugh at these old- 


GEORGE THE FIRST 629 

world ceremonies ? View them as you will, according to your mood ; 
and with scorn or with respect, or with anger and sorrow, as your 
temper leads you. Up goes Gessler’s hat upon the pole. Salute 
that symbol of sovereignty with heartfelt awe ; or with a sulky 
shrug of acquiescence, or with a grinning obeisance ; or with a stout 
rebellious No — clap your own beaver down on your pate, and refuse 
to doff it to that spangled velvet and flaunting feather. I make no 
comment upon the spectators’ behaviour ; all I say is, that Gessler’s 
cap is still up in the market-place of Europe, and not a few folks 
are still kneeling to it. 

Put clumsy High Dutch statues in place -of the marbles of 
V ersailles : fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those of 
Marly : spread the tables with Schweinskopf, Specksuppe, Leber- 
kuchen, and the like delicacies, in place of the French cuisine; and 
fancy Frau von Kielmansegge dancing with Count Kammerjunker 
Quirini, or singing French songs with the most awful German accent; 
imagine a coarse Versailles, and we have a Hanover before us. “ I 
am now got into the region of beauty,” writes Mary Wortley, from 
Hanover, in 1716; “all the women have literally rosy cheeks, 
snowy foreheads and necks, jet eyebrows, to which may generally 
be added coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them to 
the day of their death, and have a very fine effect by candlelight : 
but I could wish they were handsome with a little variety. They 
resemble one another as Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain, and 
are in as much danger of melting away by too nearly approaching 
the fire.” The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted seraglio of the 
first George of Hanover, the year after his accession to the British 
throne. There were great doings and fe;asts there. Here Lady 
Mary saw George II. too. “I can tell you, without flattery or 
partiality,” she says, “ that our young prince has all the accomplish- 
ments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of spright- 
liness and understanding, and a something so very engaging in his 
behaviour that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear 
charming.” I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick 
Prince of Wales, George II.’s son ; and upon George III., of course ; 
and upon George IV. in an eminent degree. It was the rule to 
be dazzled by princes, and people’s eyes winked quite honestly at 
that Royal radiance. 

The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous ; pretty well 
paid, as times went ; above all, paid with a regularity which few 
other European Courts could boast of. Perhaps you will be amused 
to know how the Electoral Court was composed. There were the 
princes of the house in the first class ; in the second, the single 
field-marshal of the army (the contingent was 18,000, Pollnitz says, 


630 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his pay). Then follow, 
in due order, the authorities civil and military, the working privy 
councillors, the generals of cavalry and infantry, in the third class ; 
the high chamberlain, high marshals of the Court, high masters of 
the horse, the major-generals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth 
class ; down to the majors, the hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries 
or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble. 

We find the master of the horse had 1090 thalers of pay ; the 
high chamberlain, 2000 — a thaler being about three shillings of 
our money. There were two chamberlains, and one for tlie 
Princess; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five gentlemen ushers; 
eleven pages and personages to educate these young noblemen — 
such as a governor, a preceptor, a fecht-meister or fencing-master, 
and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome salary of 400 
thalers. There were three body and Court physicians, with 800 
and 500 thalers ; a Court barber, 600 thalers ; a Court organist ; 
two musikanten ; four French fiddlers ; twelve trumpeters, and a 
bugler; so that there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in 
Hanover. There were ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four 
lacqueys in livery ; a maitre-d’hotel, and attendants of the kitchen ; 
a French cook ; a body cook ; ten cooks ; six cooks’ assistants ; 
two Braten masters, or masters of the roast — (one fancies enormous 
spits turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling 
the dripping) ; a pastry-baker ; a pie-baker ; and, finally, three 
scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In the 
sugar-chamber there were four j^astrycooks (for the ladies, no 
doubt) ; seven officers in the wine and beer cellars ; four bread- 
bakers ; and five men in the plate-room. There were 600 horses in 
the Serene stables — no less than twenty teams of princely carriage 
horses, eight to a team ; sixteen coachmen ; fourteen postillions ; 
nineteen ostlers ; thirteen helps, besides smiths, carriage-masters, 
horse-doctors, and other attendants of the stable. The female 
attendants were not so numerous : I grieve to find but a dozen or 
fourteen of them about the Electoral premises, and only two washer- 
women for all the Court. These functionaries had not so much to 
do as in the present age. I own to finding a pleasure in these 
small-beer chronicles. I like to people the old world with its every- 
day figures and inhabitants — not so much with heroes fighting 
immense battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage; or 
statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating ponderous 
laws or dire conspiracies — as with people occupied with their every- 
day work or pleasure ; my lord and lady hunting in the forest, or 
dancing in the Court, or bowing to their Serene Highnesses as they 
pass in to dinner ; John Cook and his procession bringing the meal 


GEORGE THE FIRST 631 

from the kitchen ; the jolly butlers bearing in the flagons from the 
cellar ; the stout coachman driving the ponderous gilt waggon, with 
eight cream-coloured horses in liousings of scarlet velvet and morocco 
leather ; a postillion on the leaders, and a pair or a half-dozen of 
running footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with 
conical caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as they 
ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I 
fancy the citizens’ wives and their daughters looking out from the 
balconies ; and the burghers over their beer and mumm, rising up, 
cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with torch- 
bearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, and squadrons 
of jack-booted lifeguardsmen, girt with shining cuirasses, and be- 
striding thundering chargers, escorting his Highness’s coach from 
Hanover to Herrenhausen ; or halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen’s 
country house of Monplaisir, which lies half-way between the 
summer-palace and the Residenz. 

In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst common 
men were driven olf by herds, and sold to flght the Emperor’s 
enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis’s troops of 
common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from Court to Court, 
seeking service with one prince or the other, and naturally taking 
command of the ignoble vulgar of soldiery which battled and died 
almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers travelled 
from Court to Court in search of employment ; not merely noble 
males, but noble females too ; and if these latter were beauties, and 
obtained the favourable notice of princes, they stopped in the 
Courts, became the favourites of their Serene or Royal Highnesses ; 
and received great sums of money and splendid diamonds ; and were 
promoted to be duchesses, marchionesses, and the like ; and did 
not fall much in public esteem for the manner in which they won 
their advancement. In this way Mademoiselle de Qu^rouailles, a 
beautiful French lady, came to London, on a special mission of 
Louis XIV., and was adopted by our grateful country and sovereign, 
and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful 
Aurora of Kdnigsmarck travelling about found favour in the eyes of 
Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who 
gave us a beating at Fontenoy; and in this manner the lovely 
sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of Meissenbach (who had actually 
been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled on a like 
errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favourite there in posses- 
sion) journeyed to Hanover, and became favourites of the Serene 
house there reigning. 

That beautiful Aurora von Kdnigsmarck and her brother are 
wonderful as types of bygone manners, and strange illustrations of 


632 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


the morals of old days. The Konigsmarcks were descended from 
an ancient noble family of Brandenburg, a branch of which passed 
into Sweden, where it enriched itself and produced several mighty 
men of valour. 

The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior 
and plunderer of the Thirty Years’ War. One of Hans’s sons, Otto, 
appeared as ambassador at the Court of Louis XIV., and had to 
make a Swedish speech at his reception before the Most Christian 
King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but he forgot the 
speech, and what do you think he did'? Far from being discon- 
certed, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to His Most 
Christian Majesty and his Court, not one of whom understood his 
lingo with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their 
gravity as best they might. 

Otto’s nephew, Aurora’s elder brother, Carl Johann of Konigs- 
marck, a favourite of Charles II., a beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a 
rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped but deserved being 
hanged in England, for the murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat. 
He had a little brother in London with him at this time : — as great 
a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain as his elder. This 
lad, Philip of Kdnigsmarck, also was implicated in the affair ; and 
perhaps it is a pity he ever brought his pretty neck out of it. He 
went over to Hanover, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment 
of H.E. Highness’s dragoons. In early life he had been page in the 
Court of Celle ; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess 
Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married to her cousin 
George the Electoral Prince, had been in love with each other as 
children. Their loves were now to be renewed, not innocently, and 
to come to a fearful end. 

A biography of the wife of George I., by Doctor Doran, has 
lately appeared and I confess I am astounded at the verdict which 
that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this most unfor- 
tunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine of a husband no 
one can doubt ; but that the bad husband had a bad wife is equally 
clear. She was married to her cousin for money or convenience, as 
all princesses were married. She was most beautiful, lively, witty, 
accomplished : liis brutality outraged her ; his silence and coldness 
chilled her; his cruelty insulted her. No wonder she did not love 
him. How could love be a part of the compact in such a marriage 
as that '? With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the poor creature 
bestowed it on Philip of Konigsmarck, than whom a greater scamp 
does not walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred 
and eighty years after tlie fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, 
a Swedish professor lights upon a box of letters in the University 


GEORGE THE FIRST 633 

Library at Upsala, written by Philip and Dorothea to each other, 
and telling their miserable story. 

The bewitching Konigsmarck had conquered two female hearts 
in Hanover. Besides the Electoral Prince’s lovely young wife 
Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a hideous old 
Court lady, the Countess of Platen. The Princess seems to have 
pursued him with the fidelity of many years. Heaps of letters 
followed him on his campaigns, and were answered by the daring 
adventurer. The Princess wanted to fly with him ; to quit her 
odious husband at any rate. She besought her parents to receive 
her back ; had a notion of taking refuge in France, and going over 
to the Catholic religion ; had absolutely packed her jewels for flight, 
and very likely arranged its details with her lover, in that last long 
night’s interview, after which Philip of Konigsmarck was seen no 
more 

Konigsmarck, inflamed with drink — there is scarcely any vice 
of which, according to his own showing, this gentleman was not a 
practitioner — had boasted at a supper at Dresden of his intimacy 
with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with the Princess, but 
with another lady powerful in Hanover. Tho Countess Platen, the 
old favourite of the Elector, hated the young Electoral Princess. 
The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly made fun of the 
old one. The Princess’s jokes were conveyed to the old Platen just 
as our idle words are carried about at this present day : and so they 
both hated each other. 

The characters in the tragedy, of which the curtain was now 
about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. There 
is the jolly Prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, loving his cups and 
his ease (I think his good-humour makes the tragedy but darker) ; 
his Princess, who speaks little, but observes all ; his old painted 
Jezebel of a mistress; his son, the Electoral Prince, shrewd too, 
quiet, selfish, not ill-humoured, and generally silent, except when 
goaded into fury by the intolerable tongue of his lovely wife ; there 
is poor Sophia Dorothea, with her coquetry and her wrongs, and 
her passionate attachment to her scamp of a lover, and her wild 
imprudences, and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her 
furious jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and 
cheated him), and her prodigious falsehoods; and the confidante, 
of course, into whose hands the letters are slipped ; and there is 
Lothario, finally, than whom, as I have said, one can’t imagine a 
more handsome, wdcked, worthless reprobate. 

How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain ! How 
madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies ! She has 
bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, and they 


634 ) 


THE FOUR GEORGES 

won’t believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, she finds 
adherents ready to conspire for her even in history, and people who 
have to deal with her are charmed, and fascinated, and bedevilled. 
How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood by Mary’s innocence ! 
Are there not scores of ladies in this audience who persist in it too ? 
Innocent ! I remember as a boy how a great party persisted in 
declaring Caroline of Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was 
Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the 
dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her ; and 
there never was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard’s wife 
innocent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives 
were with their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained 
it with blood ; and her brothers were quite right in finishing Blue- 
beard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, Caroline of Brunswick was 
innocent ; and Madame Lafiarge never poisoned her husband ; and 
Mary of Scotland never blew up hers ; and poor Sophia Dorothea 
was never unfaithful ; and Eve never took the apple — it was a 
cowardly fabrication of the serpent’s. 

George Louis has been held up to execration as a murderous 
Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral Prince had no share in the trans- 
action in which Philip of Konigsmarck was scuffled out of this 
mortal scene. The Prince was absent when the catastrophe came. 
The Princess had had a hundred warnings; mild hints from her 
husband’s parents ; grim remonstrances from himself — but took no 
more heed of this advice than such besotted poor wretches do. On 
the night of Sunday, the 1st of July 1694, Konigsmarck paid a 
long visit to the Princess, and left her to get ready for flight. Her 
husband was away at Berlin ; her carriages and horses were prepared , 
and ready for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess i 
Platen had brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest 
Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the arrest of | 
the Swede. On the way by which he was to come, four guards were i 
commissioned to take him. He strove to cut his way through the ! 
four men, and wounded more than one of them. They fell upon 
him ; cut him down ; and, as he was lying wounded on the ground, 
the Countess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted, came i 
out and beheld him prostrate. He cursed her with his dying lips, I 
and the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He 
was despatched presently ; his body burnt the next day ; and all ! 
traces of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were 1 
enjoined silence under severe penalties. The Princess was reported j 
to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken in October of * 
the same year, being then eight-and-twenty years old, and consigned I 
to the castle of Ahlden, where she remained a prisoner for no less j 



THE HEATH OF KONIGSMARK. 





GEORGE THE FIRST 635 

than thirty-two years. A separation had been pronounced previ- 
ously between her and her husband. She was called henceforth 
the “ Princess of Ahlden,” and her silent husband no more uttered 
her name. 

Four years after the Konigsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Augustus, 
the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, his son, 
reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Hanover, after 
which he became, as we know. King of Great Britain, France, and 
Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old Countess Platen 
died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, but nevertheless the 
legend says that she constantly saw Konigsmarck’s ghost by her 
wicked old bed. And so there was an end of her. 

In the year 1700 the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of poor 
Queen Anne’s children, died, and the folks of Hanover straightway 
became of prodigious importance in England. The Electress Sophia 
was declared the next in succession to the English throne. George 
Louis was created Duke of Cambridge ; grand deputations were 
sent over from our country to Deutschland ; but Queen Anne, whose 
weak heart hankered after her relatives at Saint Germains, never 
could be got to allow her cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to 
come and pay his respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her 
House of Peers. Had the Queen lasted a month longer ; had the 
English Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and 
crafty; had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been 
equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in 
Saint James’s Chapel Royal. 

When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no hurry 
about putting it on. He waited at hon^e for a while; took an 
affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herrenhausen ; and set 
out in the most leisurely manner to ascend “the throne of his 
ancestors,” as he called it in his first speech to Parliament. He 
brought with him a compact body of Germans, whose society he 
loved, and whom he kept round the Royal person. He had his 
i faithful German chamberlains ; his German secretaries ; his negroes, 
captives of his bow and spear in Turkish wars ; his two ugly elderly 
German favourites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, 
whom he created respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess 
of Kendal. The Duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence 
' was irreverently nicknamed the Maypole. The Countess was a 
; large-sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denominated 
1 the Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights ; 
clung round the linden trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, and 
s at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not 
i come on account of her debts ; but finding the Maypole would not 


636 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of 
Hanover, unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway 
put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One 
seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. 
The King we had selected ; the coirrtiers who came in his train ; 
the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of 
whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back — I protest it is a 
wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich 
pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George ; and yet I can scarcely 
keep my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous absurdity 
of this advent ! 

Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of 
Canterbury prostrating himself to the Head of his Church, with 
Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grinning 
behind the Defender of the Faith. Here is my Lord Duke of 
Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times ; he who 
betrayed King William — betrayed King James II. — betrayed Queen 
Anne — betrayed England to the French, the Elector to the Pretender, 
the Pretender to the Elector ; and here are my Lords Oxford and 
Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the 
former ; and if a month’s more time had been allowed him, would 
have had King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen 
made their bows and congees with proper decorum and ceremony ; 
but yonder keen old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. 
“ Loyalty,” he must think, “ as applied to me — it is absurd! There 
are, fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an accident, 
and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for 
mine. You Tories hate me; you archbishop, smirking on your 
knees, and prating about Heaven, you know I don’t care a fig for 
your Thirty-nine Articles, and can’t understand a word of your 
stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford — you 
know you were conspiring against me a month ago ; and you, my 
Lord Duke of Marlborough — you would sell me or any man else, if 
you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melusina, come, 
my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, and have some 
oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards : let us 
make the best of our situation ; let us take what we can get, and 
leave these bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, 
and cheat, in their own way ! ” 

If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the losing 
side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of that general 
sauve qui pent amongst the Tory party ! How mum the Tories 
became ; how the House of Lords and House of Commons chopped 
round ; and how decorously the majorities welcomed King George ! 


(GEORGE THE FIRST 637 

Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, 
pointed out the shame of the Peerage, where several lords concurred 
to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved in former 
parliaments by many particular resolutions. And so their conduct 
was shameful. St. John had the best of the argument, but the 
worst of the vote. Bad times were come for him. He talked 
philosophy, and professed innocence. He courted retirement, and 
was ready to meet persecution ; but, hearing that honest Mat Prior, 
who had been recalled from Paris, was about to peach regarding 
the past transactions, the philosopher bolted, and took that magni- 
ficent head of his out of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the 
lazy and good-humoured, had more courage, and awaited the storm 
at home. He and Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and 
both brought their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. 
When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few years after- 
wards, and it was asked, what next should be done with him'? “Done 
with him ? Fling him to the lions,” Cadogan said, Marlborough’s 
lieutenant. But the British lion of those days did not care much 
for drinking the blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the 
bones of bishops. Only four men were executed in London for the 
rebellion of 1715; and twenty-two in Lancashire. Above a thou- 
sand taken in arms submitted to the King’s mercy, and petitioned 
to be transported to his Majesty’s colonies in America. I have 
heard that their descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes 
which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend 
of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with 
their lives. 

As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the 
speculation is ! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen 
came out at Lord Mar’s summons, mounted the white cockade, that 
has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied round the 
ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with 8000 men, and 
but 1500 opposed to him, might have driven the enemy over the 
Tweed, and taken possession of the whole of Scotland ; but that the 
Pretender’s Duke did not venture to move when the day was his 
own. Edinburgh Castle might have been in King’s James’s hands ; 
but that the men who were to escalade it stayed to drink his 
health at the tavern, and arrived two hours too late at the rendez- 
vous under the castle wall. There was sympathy enough in the 
town — the projected attack seems to have been known there — Lord 
Mahon quotes Sinclair’s account of a gentleman not concerned, who 
told Sinclair, that he was in a house that evening where eighteen of 
them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, “powdering 
their hair,” for the attack on the castle. Suppose they had not 


638 THE FOUE GEORGES 

stopped to powder their hair? Edinburgh Castle, and town, and 
all Scotland were King’s James’s. The North of England rises, and 
marches over Barnet Heath upon London. Wyndham is up in 
Somersetshire; Packington in Worcestershire ; and Vivian in Corn- 
wall. The Elector of Hanover and his hideous mistresses pack up 
the plate, and perhaps the Crown jewels, in London, and are ofl, 
vid Harwich and Helvoetsluys, for dear old Deutschland. The 
King — God save him ! — lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause ; 
shouting multitudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough 
weeping tears of joy, and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In 
a few years mass is said in Saint Paul’s ; matins and vespers are 
sung in York Minster ; and Doctor Swift is turned out of his stall 
and deanery house at Saint Patrick’s to give place to Father 
Dominic from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, 
and once thirty years afterwards — all this we might have had but 
for the pulveris exigui jactu, that little toss of powder for the hair 
which the Scotch conspirators stopped to take at the tavern. 

You understand the distinction I would draw between history — 
of which I do not aspire to be an expounder — and manners and life 
such as these sketches would describe. The rebellion breaks out in 
the North ; its story is before you in a hundred volumes, in none 
more fairly than in the excellent narrative of Lord Mahon. The 
clans are up in Scotland; Derwentwater, Nithsdale, and Forster 
are. in arms in Northumberland — these are matters of history, for 
which you are referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are 
set to watch the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. 
I read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death for 
wearing oak boughs in their hats on the 29th of May — another 
badge of the beloved Stuarts It is with these we have to do, 
rather than the marches and battles of the armies to which the 
poor fellows belonged — with statesmen, and how they looked, and 
how they lived, rather than with measures of State, which belong to 
history alone. For example, at the close of the old Queen’s reign, 
it is known that the Duke of Marlborough left the kingdom — after 
what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, 
accepted ; after what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she 
can or dare, say. The Queen dead ; who so eager to return as my 
Lord Duke ? Who shouts God save the King ! so lustily as the 
great conqueror of Blenheim and Malplaquet? (By the Avay, he 
will send over some more money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) 
Who lays his hand on his blue riband, and lifts his eyes more grace- 
fully to Heaven than this hero? He makes a quasi-triumphal 
entrance into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt coach — ■ 
and the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere by Chancery 


GEORGE THE FIRST 639 

Lane, and his Highness is obliged to get another. There it is we 
have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, not with the great 
folks in the procession. We are not the Historic Muse, but her 
Ladyship’s attendant, tale-bearer — valet de ehamhre — for whom no 
man is a hero ; and, as yonder one steps from his carriage to the 
next handy conveyance, we take the number of the hack ; we look 
all over at his stars, ribands, embroidery ; we think within ourselves, 
0 you unfathomable schemer ! 0 you warrior invincible ! 0 you 

beautiful smiling J udas ! What master would you not kiss or 
betray % What traitor’s head, blackening on the spikes on yonder 
gate, ever hatched a tithe of the treason which has worked under 
your periwig 1 

We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would 
behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth’s lively perspective of 
Cheapside, or read of it in a hundred contemporary books which 
paint the manners of that age. Our dear old Spectator looks 
smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable signs, and describes 
them with his charming humour. “ Our streets are filled with Blue 
Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to mention Flying Pigs and 
Hogs in Armour, with other creatures more extraordinary than any 
in the deserts of Africa.” A few of these quaint old figures still 
remain in London town. You may still see there, and over its old 
hostel in Ludgate Hill, the “ Belle Sauvage ” to whom the Sp>ectator 
so pleasantly alludes in that paper ; and who was, probably, no other 
than the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued from death the 
daring Captain Smith. There is the “ Lion’s Head,” down whose 
jaws the Spectator's own letters were passed ; and over a great 
banker’s in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder 
of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy. People 
this street, so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with 
servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, 
his lacquey marching before him ; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, trip- 
ping to chapel, her footboy carrying her Ladyship’s great prayer- 
l 30 ok; with itinerant tradesmen singing their hundred cries (I 
remember forty years ago, as boy in London city, a score of cheery 
familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to 
the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuffboxes as they issue thence, 
their periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa 
beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of 
soldiers brawling and bustling at the door — gentlemen of the Life 
Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the 
seams ; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue 
cloth, with tlie garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver ; 
men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff’ Harry left 


640 THE FOUR GEORGES 

them, with their ruff and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King’s 
Majesty himself is going to Saint James’s as we pass. If he is 
going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his 
guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty 
only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen 
of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow 
the King in coaches. It must he rather slow work. 

Our Spectator and Tatler are full of delightful glimpses of the 
town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, 
we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet-show, the auction, 
even the cockpit : we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accom- 
pany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden 
— it will be called Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will 
paint for it. Would you not like to step back into the past, and 
be introduced to Mr. Addison^ — not the Right Honourable Joseph 
Addison, Esquire, George I.’s Secretary of State, but to the delight- 
ful painter of contemporary manners ; the man who, when in good- 
humour himself, was the pleasantest companion in all England. I 
should like to go into Lockit’s with him, and drink a bowl along 
with Sir R. Steele (who has just been knighted by King George, 
and who does not happen to have any money to pay his share of 
the reckoning). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison to his 
secretary’s office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our 
business is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the 
theatre, and the Mall. Delightful Spectator ! kind friend of leisure 
hours ! happy companion ! true Christian gentleman ! How much 
greater, better, you are than the King Mr. Secretary kneels to ! 

You can have foreign testimony about old-world London if you 
like ; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pdllnitz, 
will conduct us to it. 

“A man of sense,” says he, “or a fine gentleman, is never at a 
loss for company in London, and this is the way the latter passes 
his time. He rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword 
at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The Park is 
commonly the place where he walks, because ’tis the Exchange for 
men of quality. ’Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, 
only the Park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be 
described. The grand walk is called the Mall ; is full of people at 
every hour of the day, but especially at morning and evening, when 
their Majesties often walk with the Royal family, who are attended 
only by half-a-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons 
to walk at the same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen 
always appear in rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years 
ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, are now embroidered 


GEORGE THE FIRST 


641 


and bedaubed as much as the French. I speak of persons of 
quality ; for the citizen still contents himself with a suit of fine 
cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well 
clothed here, and even the beggars don’t make so ragged an appear- 
ance as they do elsewhere.” 

After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or un- 
dress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters 
to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by the persons 
he would see. 

“For ’tis a rule with the English to go once a day at least to 
houses of this sort, where they talk of business and news, read the 
papers, and often look at one another without opening their lips. 
And ’tis very well they are so mute : for were they all as talkative 
as people of other nations, the coffee-houses w'ould be intolerable, 
and there would be no hearing what one man said where they are 
so many. The chocolate-house in St. James’s Street, where I go 
every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a man 
can scarce turn about in it.” 

Delightful as London city was. King George I. liked to be out 
I of it as much as ever he could ; and when there, passed all his 
I time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, a 
j hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down 
I from Saint Paul’s, and sighed out, “Was flir Plunder ! ” The 
I German women plundered ; the German secretaries plundered ; the 
j German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and 
Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take 
what you can get, was the old monarch’s maxim. He was not a 
lofty monarch, certainly : he was not a , patron of the fine arts : 
but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, he was not 
extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate 
ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as 
possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. His heart was 
in Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing 
through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of the coach-window, 
and gasped out, “ Osnaburg, Osnaburg ! ” He was more than fifty 
years of age when he came amongst us : we took him because we 
wanted him, because he served our turn ; we laughed at his un- 
couth German ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty 
for what it was worth ; laid hands on what money he could ; kept 
us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would 
have been on his side in those days. Cynical and selfish as he 
was, he was better than a king out of Saint Germains with the 
French King’s orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in 
his train. 

7 


2s 


642 


THE FOUR GEORGES 

**Tlie Fates are supposed to interest themselves about Royal 
personages ; and so this one had omens and prophecies specially 
regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a prophecy 
that he should die very soon after his wife ; and sure enough, pallid 
Death, having seized upon the luckless Princess in her castle of 
Ahlden, presently pounced upon H.M. King George I., in his 
travelling chariot, on the Hanover road. What postillion can out- 
ride that pale horseman^ It is said, George promised one of his 
left-handed widows to come to her after death, if leave were granted 
to him to revisit the glimpses of the moon ; and soon after his 
demise, a great raven actually flying or hopping in at the Duchess 
of Kendal’s window at Twickenham, she chose to imagine the King’s 
spirit inhabited these plumes, and took special care of her sable 
visitor. Affecting metempsychosis — funereal Royal bird ! How 
pathetic is the idea of the Duchess weeping over it ! When this 
chaste addition to our English aristocracy died, all her jewels, her 
plate, her plunder went over to her relations in Hanover. I wonder 
whether her heirs took the bird, and whether it is still flapping its 
wings over Herrenhausen ! 

The days are over in England of that strange religion of king- 
worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple of God ; when 
servility was held to be ennobling duty; when beauty and youth 
tried eagerly for Royal favour ; and woman’s shame was held to be 
no dishonour. Mended morals and mended manners in Courts and 
people are among the priceless consequences of the freedom which 
George I. came to rescue and secure. He kept his compact with 
his English subjects ; and if he escaped no more than other men 
and monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we may thank him 
for preserving and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free 
air. Royal and humble homes have alike been purified ; and Truth, 
the birthright of high and low among us, which quite fearlessly j 
judges our greatest personages, can only speak of them now in words j 
of respect and regard. There are stains in the portrait of the first j 
George, and traits in it which none of us need admire ; but among 
the nobler features are justice, courage, moderation — and these we 
may recognise ere we turn the picture to the wall. 


GEORGE THE SECOND 


N the afternoon of the 14th of June 1727, two horsemen 



might have been perceived galloping along the road from 


Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jackboots 
of the j)eriod. w^as a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent 
cavalier : but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you might 
see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, no man 
loved sport better ; and in the hunting-fields of Norfolk, no squire 
rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood and Sweetlips 
more lustily, than he who now thundered over the Richmond road. 

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the 
owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, 
to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be introduced 
to the master, however pressing the business might be. The 
master Avas asleep after his dinner; he always slept after his 
dinner : and woe be to the person who interrupted him ! Never- 
theless, our stout friend of the jackboots put the affrighted ladies 
aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, Avherein upon the 
bed lay a little gentleman; and here the eager messenger knelt 
down in his jackboots. ' 

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong 
German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him 1 
“ I am Sir Robert Walpole,” said the messenger. The awakened 
sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. “ I have the honour to announce 
to your Majesty that your Royal father. King George I., died at 
Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the 10th instant.” 

^Hat is one big lief” roared out his Sacred Majesty King 
George II. : but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from that 
day until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the 
name, ruled over England. 

How the King made away with his father’s will under the 
astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury; how he was a 
choleric little sovereign ; how he shook his fist in the face of his 
father’s courtiers; how he kicked his coat and wig about in his 
rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal, with whom he 


644 . 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


differed, — you will read in all the history hooks ; and how he 
speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold Minister, 
whom he had hated during his father’s life, and by whom he was 
served during fifteen years of his own with admirable prudence, 
fidelity, and success. But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have 
had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, 
we should have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough 
nor united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and 
good-humoured resistance, we might have had German despots 
attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us ; we should have had 
revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter 
of a century of peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as 
the country never enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments, that 
dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, 
that great citizen, patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion 
he was little better than a heathen ; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs 
and bishops, and laughed at High Church and Low. In private 
life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures ; he passed his 
Sundays tippling at Richmond ; and his holidays bawling after 
dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors over beef and punch. He 
cared for letters no more than his master did : he judged human 
nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was 
right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, 
with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us ; 
with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. There were 
parsons at Oxford as double-dealing and dangerous as any priests 
out of Rome, and he routed them both. He gave Englishmen no 
conquests, but he gave them peace and ease and freedom ; the 
Three per Cents nearly at par; and wheat at five and six and 
twenty shillings a quarter. 

It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not more high- 
minded men ; especially fortunate that they loved Hanover so much 
as to leave England to have her own way. Our chief troubles 
began when we got a King who gloried in the name of Briton, 
and, being born in the country, proposed to rule it. He was no 
more fit to govern England than his grandfather and great-grand- 
father, who did not try. It was righting itself during their occu- 
pation. The dangerous noble old spirit of Cavalier loyalty was 
dying out ; the stately old English High Church was emptying 
itself ; the questions dropping which, on one side and the other — 
the side of loyalty, prerogative. Church, and King, — the side of 
right, truth, civil and religious freedom, — had set generations of 
brave men in arms. By the time when George III. came to the 
throne the combat between loyalty and liberty was come to an 


GEORGE THE SECOND 645 

end ; and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying in 
Italy. 

Those who are curious about European Court history of the 
last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and 
what a Court was that of Berlin, where George II. ’s cousins ruled 
sovereign. Frederick the Great’s father knocked down his sons, 
daughters, officers of state ; he kidnapped big men all Europe over 
to make grenadiers of : his feasts, his parades, his wine-parties, his 
tobacco-parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild the Great in 
language, pleasures, and behaviour is scarcely more delicate than 
this German sovereign. Louis XV., his life, and reign, and doings, 
are told in a thousand French memoirs. Our George II., at least, 
was not a worse king than his neighbours. He claimed and took 
the Royal exemption from doing right which sovereigns assumed. 
A dull little man of low tastes he appears to us in England ; yet 
Hervey tells us that this choleric prince was a great sentimentalist, 
and that his letters — of which he wrote prodigious quantities — -were 
quite dangerous in their powers of fascination. He kept his senti- 
mentalities for his Germans and his queen. With us English he 
never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice, yet 
he did not give much money, and did not leave much behind him. 
He did not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend to love 
them. He was no more a hypocrite about religion than his father. 
He judged men by a low standard ; yet, with such men as were 
near him, was he wrong in judging as he did 1 He readily detected 
lying and flattery, and liars and flatterers were perforce his com- 
panions. Had he been more of a dupe he might have been more 
amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. No boon was 
it to him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery 
round about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords 
and Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not his clergy, 
his courtiers, bring him the same story ^ Dealing with men and 
women in his rude sceptical way, he came to doubt about honour, 
male and female, about patriotism, about religion. “ He is wild, 
but he fights like a man,” George I., the taciturn, said of his son 
and successor. Courage George II. certainly had. The Electoral 
Prince, at the head of his father’s contingent, had approved himself 
a good and brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At 
Oudenarde he specially distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the 
other claimant to the English throne won but little honour. There 
was always a question about James’s courage. Neither then in 
Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, 
did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But dapper 
little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought like 


646 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia with sword and 
pistol ; and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that 
that famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns 
hated each other with all their might ; their seconds were appointed ; 
the place of meeting was settled ; and the duel was only prevented 
by strong representations made to the two, of the European laughter 
which would have been caused by such a transaction. 

Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that 
he demeaned himself like a little man of valour. At Dettingen liis 
horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped from 
carrying him into the enemy’s lines. The King, dismounting from 
the fiery quadruped, said bravely, “Now I know I shall not run 
away ; ” and placed himself at the head of the foot, drew his sword, 
brandishing it at the whole of the French army, and calling out to 
his own men to come on, in bad English, but with tlie most famous 
pluck and spirit. In ’45, when the Pretender was at Derby, and 
many people began to look pale, the King never lost his courage — 
not he. “ Pooh ! don’t talk to me that stuff ! ” he said, like a 
gallant little prince as he was, and never for one moment allowed 
his equanimity, or his business, or his pleasures, or his travels, to 
be disturbed. On public festivals he always appeared in the hat 
and coat he wore on the famous day of Oudenarde ; and tlie people 
laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes 
out of fashion. 

In private life the Prince showed himself a worthy descendant 
of his father. In tliis respect, so much has been said about the 
first George’s manners, that we need not enter into a description of 
the son’s German harem. In 1705 he married a princess remark- 
able for beauty, for cleverness, for learning, for good temper — one 
of the truest and fondest wives ever prince was blessed with, and 
who loved iiim and was faithful to him, and he, in his coarse 
fashion, loved lier to the last. It must be told to the honour of 
Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time when German princes thought 
no more of changing their religion than you of altering your cap, 
she refused to give up Protestantism for the other creed, although 
an archduke, afterwards to be an emperor, was offered to her for 
a bridegroom. Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at 
her rebellious spirit ; it was they who tried to convert her (it is 
droll to think that Frederick the Great, who had no religion at all, 
was known for a long time in England as the Protestant hero), and 
these good Protestants set upon Caroline a certain Father Urban, 
a very skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed 
the Jesuit; and she refused Charles VI. ; and she married the little 
Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended with love, and with 


GEORGE THE SECOND 647 

every manner of sacrifice, witli artful kindness, with tender flattery, 
with entire self-devotion, thenceforward until her life’s end. 

When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was 
appointed Regent during the Royal absence. But this honour was 
never again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father 
fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second 
son, a Royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the 
Duke of Newcastle’s face, called him a rogue, and provoked his 
august father. He and his wife were turned out of Saint James’s, 
and their princely children taken from them, by order of the Royal 
head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting 
from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with 
their love, to papa and mamma; the parents watered the fruit 
with tears. They ' had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when 
Prince Frederick died — their eldest son, their heir, their enemy. 

The King called his daughter-in-law “cette diablesse Madame 
la Princesse.” The frequenters of the latter’s Court were forbidden 
to appear at the King’s : their Royal Highnesses going to Bath, we 
read how the courtiers followed them thither, and paid that liomage 
in Somersetshire which was forbidden in London. That phrase of 
“cette diablesse Madame la Princesse” explains one cause of the 
wrath of her Royal papa. She was a very clever woman : she had 
a keen sense of humour : she had a dreadful tongue : she turned 
into ridicule the antiquated sultan and his hideous harem. She 
wrote savage letters about him home to members of her family. 
So, driven out from the Royal presence, the Prince and Princess 
set up for themselves in Leicester Fields, “where,” says Walpole, 
“the most promising of the young gentlemen of the next party, 
and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new 
Court.” Besides Leicester House, they had their lodge at Richmond, 
frequented by some of the pleasantest company of those days. There 
were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little Mr. Pope from 
Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, the savage Dean of Saint 
Patrick’s, and quite a bevy of young ladies whose pretty faces smile 
on us out of history. There was Lepell, famous in ballad song; 
and the saucy charming Mary Bellenden, who would have none 
of the Prince of Wales’s fine compliments, who folded her arms 
across her breast, and bade H.R.H. keep off; and knocked his 
purse of guineas into his face, and told him she was tired of seeing 
him count them. He was not an august monarch, this Augustus. 
Walpole tells how, one night at the Royal card-table, the playful 
princesses pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, who, in 
revenge, pulled the King’s from under him, so that his Majesty fell 
on the carpet. In whatever posture one sees this Royal George, he 


648 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


is ludicrous somehow; even at Dettingen, where he fought so 
bravely, his figure is absurd — calling out in his broken English, 
and lunging with his rapier, like a fencing master. In contemporary 
caricatures, George’s son, “ the Hero of Culloden,” is also made an 
object of considerable fun. 

I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George — for those 
charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of the 
last century. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace’s letters. 
Fiddles sing all through them : wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, 
fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there : never was such 
a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he 
leads us. Hervey, the next great authority, is a darker spirit. 
About him there is something frightful : a few years since his heirs 
opened the lid of the Ickworth box; it was as if a Pompeii was 
opened to us — the last century dug up, with its temples and its 
games, its chariots, its public places— lupanaria. Wandering 
through that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through 
those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, 
and eager, and struggling — rouged, and lying, and fawning — I have 
wanted some one to be friends with. I have said to friends con- 
versant with that history, “ Show me some good person about that 
Court ; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay 
people, some one being that I can love and regard.” There is that 
strutting little sultan George II. ; there is that hunchbacked beetle- 
browed Lord Chesterfield ; there is J ohn Hervey, with his deadly 
smile, and ghastly painted face — I hate them. There is Hoadly, 
cringing from one bishopric to another ; yonder comes little Mr. Pope 
from Twickenham, with his friend the Irish Dean, in his new cassock, 
bowdng, too, but with rage flashing from under his bushy eyebrows, 
and scorn and hate quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of 
these ? Of Pope I might : at least I might love his genius, his 
wit, his greatness, his sensibility — with a certain conviction that at 
some fancied slight, some sneer which he imagined, he would turn 
upon me and stab me. Can you trust the Queen 1 She is not of 
our order ; their very position makes kings and queens lonely. One 
inscrutable attachment that inscrutable woman has. To that she 
is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her 
husband, she really cares for no created being. She is good enough 
to her children, and even fond enough of them ; but she would chop 
them all up into little pieces to please him. In her intercourse with 
all around her she was perfectly kind, gracious, and natural : but 
friends may die, daughters may depart, she will be as perfectly kind 
and gracious to the next set. If the King wants her, she will smile 
upon him, be she ever so sad ; and walk with him, be she ever so 


GEORGE THE SECOND 649 

weary ; and laugh at his brutal jokes, be she in ever so much pain 
of body or heart. Caroline’s devotion to her husband is a prodigy 
to read of. What charm had the little man ? What was there in 
those wonderful letters of thirty pages long, which he wrote to her 
when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he was 
in London with his wife ? Why did Caroline, the most lovely and 
accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red-faced staring 
princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor ? Why, to her last 
hour, did she love him so ? She killed herself because she loved him 
so. She had the gout, and would plunge her feet in cold water in 
order to walk with him. With the film of death over her eyes, 
writhing in intolerable pain, she yet had a livid smile and a gentle 
word for her master. You have read the wonderful history of that 
deathbed ? How she bade him marry again, and the reply the old 
King blubbered out, “Non, non: j’aurai des mattresses.” There 
never was such a ghastly farce. I watch the astonishing scene — I 
stand by that awful bedside, wondering at the ways in which God 
has ordained the lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions, actions, 
ends of his creatures — and can’t but laugh, in the presence of death, 
and with the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage from 
Lord Hervey, in which the Queen’s deathbed is described, the 
grotesque horror of the details surpasses all satire : the dreadful 
humour of the scene is more terrible than Swift’s blackest pages, 
or Fielding’s fiercest irony. The man who' wrote the story had 
something diabolical about him : the terrible verses which Pope 
wrote respecting Hervey, in one of his own moods of almost fiendish 
malignity, I fear are true. I am frightened as I look back into the 
past, and fancy I behold that ghastly beautiful face ; as I think of 
the Queen writhing on her deathbed, and crying out, “ Pray ! — 
pray ! ” — of the Royal old sinner by her side, who kisses her dead 
lips with frantic grief, and leaves her to sin more ; — of the bevy of 
courtly clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, 
and who are obliged for propriety’s sake to shuffle off the anxious 
inquiries of the public, and vow that her Majesty quitted this life 
“in a heavenly frame of mind.” What a life! — to what ends 
devoted 1 What a vanity of vanities 1 It is a theme for another 
pulpit than the lecturer’s. For a pulpit? — I think the part which 
pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the most ghastly of all the 
ceremonial : the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, 
the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and syco- 
phancies — all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches : 
these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial 
over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State 
parson must bring out his commonplaces ; his apparatus of rhetorical 


650 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


black-hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter 
him — announce his piety whilst living, and when dead perform the 
obsequies of “ Our Most Religious and Gracious King.” 

I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious 
King’s favourite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for £5000. (He 
betted her £5000 that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, 
and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such 
hands for consecration ? As I peep into George II.’s Saint James’s, 

I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of 
the Court ; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps ; that 
godless old King yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as 
the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what ? 

— about righteousness and judgment? Whilst the chaplain is 
preaching, the King is chattering in German almost as loud as the 
preacher ; so loud that the clergyman— rit may be one Doctor Young, 
he who wrote “ Night Thoughts,” and discoursed on the splendours 
of the stars, the glories of Heaven, and utter vanities of this world 
— actually burst out crying in his pulpit because the Defender of 
the Faith and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him ! No 
wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amidst this 
indifference and corruption. No wonder that sceptics multiplied 
and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence 
of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the wilder- 
ness, that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hill- 
side. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which 
is the sublimer spectacle — the good John Wesley, surrounded by 
his congregation of miners at the pit’s mouth, or the Queen’s 
chaplains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, 
under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into 
the adjoining chamber, where the Queen is dressing, talking scandal 
to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling 
with the basin at her mistress’s side ? I say I am scared as I look 
round at this society — at this King, at these courtiers, at these > 
politicians, at these bishops — at this flaunting vice and levity. 
Whereabouts in this Court is the honest man ? Where is the pure I 

person one may like ? The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. I 

There are some old-world follies and some absurd ceremonials about i 

our Court of the present day, which I laugh at, but as an English- 
man, contrasting it vdth the past, shall I not acknowledge the i 

change of to-day ? As the mistress of Saint James’s passes me now, i 

I salute the Sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life ; the good j 

mother; the good wife; the accomplished lady; the enlightened 
friend of art; the tender sympathiser in her people’s glories and | 
sorrows. ' 


GEORGE THE SECOND 651 

Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but 
Lady Suftblk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold 
converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, 
loves her, and has that regard for her with which her sweet gracious- 
ness seems to have inspired almost all men and some women who 
came near her. I have noted many little traits which go to prove 
tlie charms of her character (it is not merely because she is charm- 
ing, but because she is characteristic, that I allude to her). She 
writes delightfully sober letters. Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge 
(he was, you know, a poet, penniless and in disgrace), she says : 
“The place you are in has strangely filled your head with physicians 
and cures ; but, take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone 
there to drink the waters without being sick ; and many a man 
has complained of the loss of his heart, who had it in his own 
possession. I desire you will keep yours ; for I shall not be very 
fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind you should 
be in the number of mine.” 

When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomit- 
able youth addressed some flaming love, or rather gallantry, letters 
to Mrs. Howard — curious relics they are of the romantic manner of 
wooing sometimes in use in those days. It is not passion ; it is 
not love ; it is gallantry : a mixture of earnest and acting ; high- 
flown compliments, profound bows, vows, sighs, and ogles, in the 
manner of the Cldlie romances, and Millamont and Doricourt in the 
comedy. There was a vast elaboration of ceremonies and etiquette, 
of raptures — a regulated form for kneeling and wooing which has 
quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta Howard 
accepted the noble old Earl’s philandering; answered the queer 
love-letters with due acknowledgment ; made a profound curtsey 
to Peterborough’s profound bow ; and got John Gay to help her in 
the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote 
her charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. 
“ 0 wonderful creature ! ”.he writes : — 

“ 0 wonderful creature, a woman of reason ! 

Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season ! 

When so easy to guess who this angel should be, 

Who would think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she ? ” 

The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, 
and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a delightful 
lady : — 

“ I know a thing that’s most uncommon — 

Envy, be silent, and attend ! — 

I know a reasonable woman, 

Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : 


652 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


Not warp’d by passion, aw’d by rumour, 

Not grave through pride, or gay through folly ; 

An equal mixture of good-humour 
And exquisite soft melancholy. 

Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir ? 

Yes, she has one, I must aver — 

When all the world conspires to praise her. 

The woman’s deaf, and does not hear ! ” 

Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The 
Duchess of Queensbeny bears testimony to her amiable qualities, 
and writes to her : “I tell you so and so, because you love children, 
and to have children love you.” The beautiful jolly Mary Bellenden, 
represented by contemporaries as “ the most perfect creature ever 
known,” writes very pleasantly to her “dear Howard,” her “dear 
Swiss,” from the country, whither Mary had retired after her marriage, 
and when she gave up being a maid of honour. “ How do you do, 
Mrs. Howard ? ” Mary breaks out. “ How do you do, Mrs. 
Howard 1 that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken 
with a fit of writing; but as to matter, I have nothing better 
to entertain you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you 
the following list of the stock of eatables that I am fatting for 
my private tooth. It is well known to the whole county of Kent, 
that I have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve 
promising black pigs, two young chickens, three fine geese, with 
thirteen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else the others 
do not come to maturity) ; all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, 
and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, 
Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I have 
named, say so ! ” 

A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honour. Pope 
introduces us to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant letter. “ I 
went,” he says, “ by water to Hampton Court, and met the Prince, 
with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. 
Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into protection, contrary to 
the laws against harbouring Papists, and gave me a dinner, with 
something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with 
Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour 
was of all things the most miserable, and wished that all women 
who envied it had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham of 
a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come 
home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (wiiat is w^orse a 
hundred times) with a red mai'k on the forehead from an uneasy 
hat — all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for hunters. 


GEORGE THE SECOND 653 

As soon as they wipe off the heat of the day, they must simper an 
hour and catch cold in the Princess’s apartment ; from thence to 
dinner with what appetite they may ; and after that till midnight, 
work, walk, or think which way they please. No lone house in 
Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than 
this Court. Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours 
by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the 
King, who gave audience to the Vice-chamberlain all alone under 
the garden wall.” 

I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than 
the island which we inhabit. People high and low amused them- 
selves very much more. I have calculated the manner in which 
statesmen and persons of condition passed their time — and what 
with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, wonder how they 
got through their business at all. They played all sorts of games, 
which, with the exception of cricket and tennis, have quite gone 
out of our manners now. In the old prints of Saint James’s Park, 
you stiU see the marks along the walk, to note the balls when the 
Court played at Mall. Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and 
Lord John and Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and down the 
avenue ! Most of those jolly sports belong to the past, and the 
good old games of England are only to be found in old novels, in 
old ballads, or the columns of dingy old newspapers, which say 
how a main of cocks is to be fought at Winchester between the 
Winchester men and the Hampton men; or how the Cornwall 
men and the Devon men are going to hold a great wrestling-match at 
Totnes, and so on. 

A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only country 
towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We were very 
much more gregarious ; we were amused by very simple pleasures. 
Every town had its fair, every village its wake. The old poets have 
sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous 
grinning through horse-collars, great maypole meetings, and morris- 
dances. The girls used to run races clad in very light attire ; and 
the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame in looking on. 
Dancing bears went about the country with pipe and tabor. Certain 
well-known tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of 
years, and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen 
who wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a 
band. When Beau Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting 
the lady whom he married, he treated her and her companion at 
his lodgings to a supper from the tavern, and after supper they 
sent out for a fiddler — three of them. Fancy the three, in a great 
wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or Soho, lighted by two or three 


654 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


candles in silver sconces, some grapes, and a bottle of Florence wine 
on the table, and the honest fiddler playing old times in quaint old 
minor keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and 
solemnly dances with her ! 

The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, and 
the like, went abroad and made the great tour ; the home satirists 
jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which they brought 
back ; but the greater number of people never left the country. 
The jolly squire often had never been twenty miles from home. 
Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrogate, or Scarborough, 
or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of these places of pleasure. 
Gay writes to us about the fiddlers of Tunbridge ; of the ladies 
having merry little private balls amongst themselves ; and the 
gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and music. One of 
the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea. 

“We have a young lady here,” he says, “ that is very particular 
in her desires. I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they 
prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, a husband or mata- 
dores : but this lady, who is but seventeen, and has <£30,000 to 
her fortune, places all her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her 
friends, for the sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade 
her from it, she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss 
of shape and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale 
is her passion.” 

Every country town had its assembly-room — mouldy old tene- 
ments, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed 
provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London has sucked all 
the life. York, at assize- times, and throughout the winter, harboured 
a large society of northern gentry. Shrewsbury was celebrated for 
its festivities. At Newmarket, I read of “ a vast deal of good com- 
pany, besides rogues and blacklegs;” at Norwich, of two assemblies, 
with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the gallery. 
In Cheshire (it is a maid of honour of Queen Caroline who 
writes, and who is longing to be back at Hampton Court, and 
the fun there) I peep into a country-house, and see a very merry 
party 

“We meet in the work-room before nine, eat, and break a joke 
or two till twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make 
ourselves ready, for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great 
bell fetches us into a parlour, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, 
poisoned darts, several pair of old boots and shoes worn by men 
of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from him at 
Edgehill.” And there they have their dinner, after which comes 
dancing and supper. 



AN IMPROMPTU DANCE. 





GEORGE THE SECOND 655 

As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. 
George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a 
character one can mention of the early last century but was seen in 
that famous Pump Room where Beau Nash presided, and his 
picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope — 

“This picture, placed these busts between, 

Gives satire all its strength : 

Wisdom and Wit are little seen, 

But Folly at full length.” 

I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, 
embroidered, beruffled, snuffboxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, 
and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen 
that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually had 
the audacity to walk about Bath in boots !), with his blue riband 
and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his hand, 
which he had been cheapening for his dinner. Chesterfield came 
there many a time and gambled for hundreds, and grinned through 
his gout. Mary Wortley was there, young and beautiful; and 
Mary Wortley, old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came 
there, slipping away from one husband, and on the look-out for 
another. Walpole passed many a day there ; sickly, supercilious, 
absurdly dandified, and affected ; with a brilliant wit, a delightful 
sensibility ; and for his friends, a most tender, generous, and 
faithful heart. And if you and I had been alive then, and strolling 
down Milsom Street — hush ! we should have taken our hats off, as 
an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in flannels, passed by in 
its chair, and a livid face looked out from the window — great fierce 
eyes staring from under a bushy powdered wig, a terrible frown, a 
terrible Roman nose — -and we whisper to one another, “ There he 
is ! There’s the great commoner ! There is Mr. Pitt ! ” As we 
walk away, the abbey bells are set a-ringing; and we meet our 
testy friend Toby Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, 
who tells us that the bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cow- 
keeper from Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters ; 
and Toby shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm — the 
Creole gentleman’s lodgings next his own — where the colonel’s two 
negroes are practising on the French horn. 

When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it 
playing at cards W many hours every day. The custom is well- 
nigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was general, 
fifty years before that almost universal, in the country. “ Gaming 
has become so much the fashion,” writes Seymour, the author 
of the “Court Gamester,” “that he who in company should be 


656 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


ignorant of the games in vogue would be reckoned low-bred, and 
hardly fit for conversation.” There were cards everywhere. It 
was considered ill-bred to read in company. “ Books were not fit 
articles for drawing-rooms,” old ladies used to say. People were 
jealous, as it were, and angry with them. You will find in Hervey 
that George II. was always furious at the sight of books ; and his 
Queen, who loved reading, had to practise it in secret in her closet. 
But cards were the resource of all the world. Every night for 
hours, kings and queens of England sat down and handled their 
majesties of spades and diamonds. In European Courts, I believe 
the practice still remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our 
ancestors generally adopted it. “ Books ! prithee, don’t talk to me 
about books,” said old Sarah Marlborough. “The only books I 
know are men and cards.” “Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley sent 
all his tenants a string of hogs’ puddings and a pack of cards at 
Christmas,” says the Spectator^ wishing to depict a kind landlord. 
One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I have been 
dipping cries out, “ Sure, cards have kept us women from a great 
deal of scandal ! ” Wise old Johnson regretted that he had not 
learnt to play. “It is very useful in life,” he says ; “it generates 
kindness, and consolidates society.” David Hume never went to 
bed without his whist. We have Walpole, in one of his letters, 
in a transport of gratitude for the cards. “ I shall build an altar 
to Pam,” says he, in his pleasant dandified way, “ for the escape 
of my charming Duchess of Grafton.” The Duchess had been 
playing cards at Rome, when she ought to have been at a cardinal’s 
concert, where the floor fell in, and all the monsignors were pre- 
cipitated into the cellar. Even the Nonconformist clergy looked 
not unkindly on the practice. “ I do not think,” says one of them, 
“that honest Martin Luther committed sin by playing at back- 
gammon for an hour or two after dinner, in order by unbending 
his mind to promote digestion.” As for the High Church parsons, 
they all played, bishops and all. On Twelfth-day the Court used 
to play in state. 

“This being Twelfth-day, his Majesty, the Prince of Wales, 
and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, 
appeared in the collars of their respective orders. Their Majesties, 
the Prince of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel 
Royal, preceded by the heralds. The Duke of Manchester carried 
the sword of State. The King and Prince made offering at the 
altar of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to the annual 
custom. At night their Majesties played at hazard with the nobility, 
for the benefit of the groom porter ; and ’twas said the King won 
600 guineas ; the Queen 360 ; Princess Amelia 20 ; Princess Caro- 


GEORGE THE SECOND 657 

line, 10 ; the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Portmore, several 
thousands.” 

Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 1731, 
and see how others of our forefathers were engaged. 

“ Cork, Ibth January . — This day, one Tim Croneen was, for 
the murder and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife sentenced 
to be hanged two minutes, then his head to be cut off, and his body 
divided in four quarters, to be placed in four cross-ways. He was 
servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed the murder with the 
privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be burned ; also 
of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, to deprive him 
of his share of the booty.” 

“ January Zrd . — A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman on 
the road near Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for 
which the gentleman was imprisoned.” 

“ A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman’s stables at 
Bungay, in Suffolk, by a person who cut him down, and running 
for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor man recover- 
ing, cut his throat with the knife ; and a river being nigh, jumped 
into it ; but company coming, he was dragged out alive, and was 
like to remain so.” 

“ The Honourable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Not- 
tingham, is appointed Ambassador at the Hague, in the room of 
the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home.” 

“William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chap- 
lain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berkhampstead, 
in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of the Commis- 
sioners of Bankruptcy.” 

“ Charles Creagh, Esq., and Macnamara, Esq., between 

whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had occa- 
sioned their being bound over about fifty times for breaking the 
peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, they dis- 
charged their pistols, and all three were killed on the spot — to the 
great joy of their peaceful neighbours, say the Irish papers.” 

“ Wheat is 26s. to 28s., and barley 20s. to 22s. a quarter ; three 
per cents., 92 ; best loaf sugar, 9|d. ; Bohea, 12s. to 14s. ; Pekoe, 
18s. ; and Hyson, 35s. per pound.” 

“ At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birthday 
of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 1000 
persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole ; a butt of 
wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to the populace. 
At the same time Sir William delivered to his son, then of age, 
Powdram Castle, and a great estate.” 

7 2 T 


65S 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


“ Cliarlesworth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, 
stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was severely 
handled by the populace, but the other was very much favoured, 
and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the pillory to 
protect him from the insults of the mob.” 

“ A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamp-post, 
which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory.” 

“ Mary Lynn was burnt to ashes at the stake for being con- 
cerned in the murder of her mistress.” 

“ Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally con- 
victed for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for 
transportation ; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained a free 
pardon.” 

“ The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, 
at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of <£30,000 down, and 
is to have £100,000 at the death of the Duchess Dowager of 
Marlborough, his grandmother.” 

“March 1, being the anniversary of the Queen’s birthday, when 
her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a 
splendid appearance of nobility at St. James’s. Her Majesty was 
magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin head-edging, as 
did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Portmore was said to have 
had the richest dress, though an Italian Count had twenty-four 
diamonds instead of buttons.” 

New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal 
people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole is 
constantly speaking of it ; laughing at the practice, but having the 
very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the King and 
Queen were unpopular, there were very few new clothes at the 
drawing-room. In a paper in the True Patriot, No. 3, written to 
attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Popery, Fielding 
supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in possession of London, and 
himself about to be hanged for loyalty, — when, just as the rope is 
round his neck, he says : “ My little girl entered my bed-chamber, 
and put an end to my dream by pulling open my eyes, and telling 
me that the tailor had just brought home my clothes for his Majesty’s 
birthday.” In his “Temple Beau,” the beau is dunned “for a 
birthday suit of velvet, £40.” Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding 
was dunned too. 

The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private Court 
life must have been awfully wearisome. 

“ I will not trouble you,” writes Hervey to Lady Sandon, “with 
any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse 


GEORGE THE SECOND 


659 

ever went in a more constant track, or a more imclianging circle ; 
so that, by the assistance of an almanack for the day of the week, 
and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, 
without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transac- 
tion within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levies, and 
audiences fill the morning. At night the King plays at commerce 
and backgammon, and the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady 
Charlotte runs her usual nightly gantlet, the Queen pulling her 
hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles. The Duke of 
Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual 
between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls 
from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented 
ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak ; and stirs himself 
about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to 
make it burn brisker. At last the King gets up ; the pool finishes ; 
and everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady 
Charlotte and my Lord Lifibrd ; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances 
and Mr. Clark ; some to supper, some to bed ; and thus the evening 
and the morning make the day.” 

The King’s fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough 
jokes among his English subjects, to whom sauerkraut and sausages 
have ever been ridiculous objects. When our present Prince Consort 
came among us, the people bawled out songs in the streets indicative 
of the absurdity of Germany in general. The sausage-shops pro- 
duced enormous sausages which we might suppose were the daily 
food and delight of German princes. I remember the caricatures 
at the marriage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The 
bridegroom was drawn in rags. George. III.’s wife was called by 
the people a beggarly German duchess ; the British idea being that 
all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George paid 
us back. He thought there were no manners out of Germany. 
Sarah Marlborough once coming to visit the Princess, whilst her 
Royal Highness was whipping one of the roaring Royal children, 
“ Ah ! ” says George, who was standing by, “ you have no good 
manners in England, because you are not properly brought uj) 
when you are young.” He insisted that no English cook could 
roast, no English coachman could drive : he actually questioned the 
superiority of our nobility, our horses, and our roast beef ! 

Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything re- 
mained there exactly as in the Prince’s presence. There were eight 
hundred horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus of 
chamberlains. Court-marshals, and equerries ; and Court assemblies 
were held every Saturday, where all the nobility of Hanover as- 
sembled at what I can’t but think a fine and touching ceremony. 


660 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly room, and on it the 
King’s portrait. The nobility advanced, and made a bow to the 
arm-chair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had 
set up ; and spoke under their voices before the august picture, just 
as they would have done had the King Churflirst been present 
himself. 

He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, he 
went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for him in 
England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects. 
He went again in ’35 and ’36; and between the years 1740 and 
1755 was no less than eight times on tlie Continent, which amuse- 
ment he was obliged to give up at the outbreak of the Seven Years’ 
War. Here every day’s amusement was the same. “ Our life is 
as uniform as that of a monastery,” writes a courtier whom Vehse 
quotes. “ Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we 
drive in the heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden 
avenue ; and twice a day cover oim coats and coaches with dust. 
In the King’s society there never is the least change. At table, 
and at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at the end of the 
game retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French 
theatre ; the other days there is play in the gallery. In this way, 
were the King always to stop in Hanover, one could make a ten 
years’ calendar of his proceedings ; and settle beforehand what his 
time of business, meals, and pleasure would be.” 

The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady 
Yarmouth was now in full favour, and treated with profound 
respect by the Hanover society, though it appears rather neglected 
in England when she came among us. In 1740, a couple of the 
King’s daughters went to see him at Hanover ; Anna, the Princess 
of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage-day 
Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous descriptions), 
and Maria of Hesse- Cassel, with their respective lords. This made 
the Hanover Court very brilliant. In honour of his high guests, 
the King gave several ; among others, a magnificent masked 
ball, in the green theatre at Herrenhausen — the garden theatre, 
with linden and box for screen, and grass for a carpet, where the 
Platens had danced to George and his father the late sultan. The 
stage and a great part of the garden were illuminated with coloured 
lamps. Almost the whole Court appeared in white dominoes, 
“ like,” says the describer of the scene, “ like spirits in the Elysian 
fields. At night, supper was served in the gallery with three great 
tables, and the King was very merry. After supper dancing was 
resumed, and I did not get home till five o’clock by full daylight to 
Hanover, Some days afterwards we had, in the opera-house at 


GEORGE THE SECOND 


661 


Hanover, a great assembly. The King appeared in a Turkish 
dress ; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent agrafe of 
diamonds ; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a sultana ; nobody 
was more beautiful than the Princess of Hesse.” So, while poor 
Caroline is resting in her coffin, dapper little George, with his red 
face and his wliite eyebrows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, 
is dancing a pretty dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering 
about dressed up like a Turk ! For twenty years more, that little 
old Bajazet went on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came 
which choked the old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin 
to be taken out, as well as that of poor Caroline’s who had preceded 
him, so that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those 
of the faithful creature. 0 strutting Turkey-cock of Herrenhausen ! 
0 naughty little Mahomet ! in what Turkish paradise are you now, 
and where be your painted houris % So Countess Yarmouth appeared 
as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress wore an agrafe of 
diamonds, and was very merry, was liel Friends ! he was your fathers’ 
King as well as mine — let us drop a respectful tear over his grave. 

He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was 
worthy to buckle her shoe : he would sit alone weeping before her 
portrait, and when he had dried his eyes, he would go off to his 
Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October 1760, 
he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and the thirty- 
fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his Royal chocolate, 
and behold ! the Most Religious and Gracious King was lying dead 
on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden; but Walmoden 
' could not wake him. The Sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. 
The King was dead ; God save the King ! But, of course, poets 
and clergymen decorously bewailed the late one. Here are some 
artless verses, in which an English divine deplored the famous 
departed hero, and over which you may cry or you may laugh, 
exactly as your humour suits : — 

‘ ‘ While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 

No contest left but who should best obey ; 

Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; 

The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 

Saw to young George Augusta’s care impart 
Whate’er could raise and humanise the heart ; 

Blend all his grandsire’s virtues with his own, 

And form their mingled radiance for the throne — 

No farther blessing could on earth be given— 

The next degree of happiness ‘Was — heaven ! ” 

If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in 
life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much more ? It 


66*2 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


was a parson who came and wept over this grave, with Walmoden 
sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man slumbering 
below. Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, 
nor wit — who tainted a great society by a bad example ; who, in 
youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual ; and Mr. 
Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was 
not good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven ! 
Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine who wept these tears over George 
the Second’s memory wore George the Third’s lawn. I don’t know 
whether people still admire his poetry or his sermons. 


GEORGE THE THIRD 


W E have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To 
read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during 
that long period would occupy our allotted time, and we 
should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the 
revolt of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and separation ; 
to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution ; to grapple 
and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon ; to gasp 
and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its 
courtly splendours, has to pass away ; generations of statesmen to rise 
and disappear ; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb ; the memory 
of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson’s and Wellington’s 
glory ; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne’s time to sink into 
their graves ; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise ; Garrick 
to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to 
leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. 
Steam has to be invented ; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, 
restored. Napoleon is to be but an episode, and George III. is to 
be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people 
through all these revolutions of thought,’ government, society; to 
survive out of the old world into ours. 

When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young 
Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as 
a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, wdiere 
my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until 
we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. “ That is he,” 
said the black man : “ that is Bonaparte ! He eats three sheep 
every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on ! ” There 
were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta 
serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre. 

With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through 
the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great 
Prince Regent. I can see yet the guards pacing before the gates of 
the place. The place ! What place ? The palace exists no more 
than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where 


664 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in 
and outi The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven to the 
realms of Pluto ; the tall Guards have marched into darkness, and 
the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace 
once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down 
the steps to Saint James’s Park. A score of grave gentlemen are 
taking their tea at the “ Athenseum Club ; ” as many grisly warriors 
are garrisoning the “United Service Club” opposite. Pall Mall is 
the great social Exchange of London now — the mart of news, of 
politics, of scandal, of rumour — the English Forum, so to speak, 
where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech 
of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, 
to a few antiquaries whose thoughts are with the past rather than 
with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and 
Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look ! About this spot Tom of Ten 
Thousand was killed by Konigsmarck’s gang. In that great red 
house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George III.’s 
uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough’s palace, just as it stood when 
that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live ; at 
the house, now No. 79,* and occupied by the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mistress Eleanor 
Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen Caroline’s chair issued 
from under yonder arch ! All the men of the Georges have passed 
up and down the street. It has seen Walpole’s chariot and 
Chatham’s sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to 
Brooks’s ; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas ; 
and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett’s ; and Byron 
limping into Wattier’s ; and Swift striding out of Bury Street ; and 
Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for 
liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering 
over the pavement ; and J ohnson counting the posts along the 
streets, after dawdling before Dodsley’s window ; and Horry Walpole 
hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought at Christie’s ; 
and George Selwyn sauntering into White’s. 

In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of 
correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole’s, 
or so bitter and bright as Hervey’s, but as interesting, and even 
more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of 
many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more 
natural than Horace’s dandified treble, and Sporus’s malignant 
whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters — as one looks at 
Reynolds’s noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and 
voluptuous people — one almost hears the voice of the dead past; 

* 1856 . 


GEORGE THE THIRD 


665 


the laughter and the chorus ; the toast called over the brimming 
cups ; the shout of the racecourse or the gaming-table ; the merry 
joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine those 
ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes ; 
how grand those gentlemen ! 

I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, 
has almost vanished off the firce of the earth, and is disappearing 
like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can’t have fine gentlemen 
any more, because we can’t have the society in which they lived. 
The people will not obey : the parasites will not be as obsequious 
as formerly : children do not go down on their knees to beg their 
parents’ blessing ; chaplains do not say grace and retire before the 
pudding : servants do not say “ your honour ” and “ your worship ” 
at every moment : tradesmen do not stand hat in hand as the 
gentleman passes : authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen’s 
anterooms with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get 
five guineas from his Lordship. In the days when there were fine 
gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt’s under-secretaries did not dare to 
sit down before him ; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his 
gouty knees to George II. ; and when George III. spoke a few 
kind words to him. Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential 
joy and gratitude ; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so 
great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord 
Palmerston on their knees whilst the Sovereign was reading a 
despatch, or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said some- 
thing civil ! 

At the accession of George III., the patricians were yet at the 
height of their good fortune. Society recognised their superiority, 
which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They 
inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the House of 
Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a multi- 
tude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of 
actual £500 notes, which members of the House took not much 
shame in receiving. Fox went into Parliament at twenty : Pitt 
when just of age : his father when not much older. It was the - 
good time for patricians. Small blame to them if they took and 
enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes of politics, the pleasures of 
social life. 

In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a 
whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen : and can watch with 
a curious interest a life which the novel-writers of that time, I 
think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, 
a lord was a lord : a gorgeous being with a blue riband, a coroneted 
chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid 


666 


TPIE FOUR GEOROES 


reverence. Richardson, a man of hnnibler birth than either of the 
above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of 
the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Domiellan, a lady who had 
lived in the great world, to examine a volume of “Sir Charles 
Grandison,” and point out any errors which she might see in this 
particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson 
changed colour ; shut up the book ; and muttered that it were best 
to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original 
men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We 
can follow them to the new club at Alniack’s : we can travel over 
Europe with them : we can accompany them not only to the public 
places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a 
whole company of them ; wits and prodigals ; some persevering in 
their bad ways ; some repentant, but relapsing ; beautiful ladies, 
parasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures 
whom we love in Reynolds’s portraits, and who still look out on 
us from his canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious 
smiles — those fine gentlemen who did us the honour to govern 
us ; who inherited their borouglis ; took their ease in their patent 
places ; and slipped Lord North’s bribes so elegantly under their 
ruffles — we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, 
hear tlieir talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, 
debts, duels, divorces ; can fancy them alive if we read the book 
long enough. We can attend at Duke Hamilton’s wedding, and 
behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring : we can peep 
into her poor sister’s deathbed : we can see Charles Fox cursing 
over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at Newmarket : we 
can imagine Biu'goyne tripping off' from Saint James’s Street to 
conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat 
crestfallen after his beating ; we can see the young King dressing 
himself for the dra^ving-room and asking ten thousand questions 
regarding all the gentlemen ; we can have high life or low, the 
struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the Zamperini — 
the Macaronis and fine ladies in their chairs trooping to the 
masquerade or Madame Cornelys’s — the crowd at Drury Lane to 
look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just 
pistolled — or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. Rice the 
forger is waiting his fate and his supper. “ You need not be par- 
ticular about the sauce for his fowl,” says one turnkey to another ; 
“ for you know he is to be hanged in the morning.” “ Yes,” replies 
the second janitor, “ but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a 
terrible fellow for melted butter.” 

Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Doctor Warner, than 
whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a better 


GEORGE THE THIRD 667 

character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait 
of himself, and completes a portrait not a little curious to look at 
now that the man has passed away ; all the foul j)leasures and 
gambols in which he revelled, played out ; all the rouged faces into 
which he leered, worms and skulls ; all the fine gentlemen whose 
shoe-buckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This worthy clergyman 
takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion, though, 
thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on 
Mr. Selwyn’s errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that 
gentleman’s proveditor. He waits uj)on the Duke of Queensberry — 
old Q. — and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He 
comes home “ after a hard day’s christening,” as he says, and writes 
to his patron before sitting down to whist and partridges for supx>er. 
He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and burgundy — he is a 
boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master’s shoes with exjdo- 
sions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste 
of that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q.’s cellar. He 
has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers’ ends. He is inex- 
pressibly mean, curiously jolly ; kindly and good-natured in secret — 
a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, 
that at his chapel in Long Acre, “ he attained a considerable popu- 
larity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery.” 
Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air ? Around a young 
King, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived 
a Court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George II.’s 
bad morals bore their fruit in George III.’s early years ; as I believe 
that a knowledge of that good man’s examxde, his moderation, his 
frugal simplicity, and God-fearing life, tervled infinitely to improve 
the morals of the country and ymrify the whole nation. 

After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn’s correspondents 
is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman at 
present* Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish 
Viceroy, having jmeviously been treasurer of the King’s household ; 
and, in 1778, the principal Commissioner for treating, consulting, 
and agreeing upon the means of quieting the divisions subsisting in 
his Majesty’s colonies, plantations, and possessions in North America. 
You may read his Lordship’s manifestoes in the Royal New York 
Gazette. He returned to England, having by no means quieted the 
colonias; and sx)eedily afterwards the Royal JSew York Gazette 
somehow ceased to be published. 

This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of 
the English fine gentlemen who was well-nigh mined by the awful 
debauchery and extravagance which jjrevailed in the great English 

* 1856 . 


668 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful : it had swarmed 
over Europe after the Peace ; it had danced, and raced, and gambled 
in all the Courts. It had made its bow at Versailles; it had run 
its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the 
Anglomania there : it had exported vast quantities of pictures and 
marbles from Rome and Florence : it had ruined itself by building 
great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pic- 
tures : it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from 
all the operas of Europe, on whom my Lords lavished their thousands, 
whilst they left their honest wives and honest children languishing 
in the lonely deserted splendours of the castle and park at home. 

Besides the great London society of those days, there w^s another 
unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about 
in the pursuit of pleasure ; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing ; 
meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vaux- 
halls, and Ridottos, about which oiu* old novelists talk so constantly), 
and outvying the real leaders of fashion in luxury, and splendour, 
and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited 
Paris as Lady Coventry, where she expected that her beauty would 
meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister 
through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English 
lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. 
Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the Countess ; and was so 
much handsomer than her Ladyship, that the parterre cried out 
that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry 
quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consump- 
tion, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with 
which she plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must 
represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, 
as plastered with white, and raddled witli red.) She left two 
daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously 
fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and 
pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where passionate 
little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady 
Mary’s face ; and where they sat conspiring how they should receive 
a mother-in-law whom their papa presently brought home. They 
got on very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to 
them ; and they grew up, and they were married, and they were 
both divorced afterwards — poor little souls ! Poor painted mother, 
poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries ! 

As for my Lord Commissioner, we can afford to speak about 
him ; because, though he was a wild and weak Commissioner at one 
time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten 
thousand pounds at a sitting — “ five times more,” says the unlucky 


GEORGE THE THIRD 66*9 

gentleman, “ than I ever lost before ” ; though he swore he never 
would touch a card again ; and yet, strange to say, went back to 
the table and lost still more ; yet he repented of his errors, sobered 
down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, 
and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had 
always loved with the best part of his heart. He had married at 
one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute 
society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced into luxury, and 
obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some 
temptations, and paid for them a bitter penalty of manly remorse ; 
from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering them 
nobly. But he always had the good wife and children in his mind, 
and they saved him. “ I am very glad you did not come to me the 
morning I left London,” he wites to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking 
for America. “ I can only say, I never knew till that moment of 
parting, what gi’ief was.” There is no parting now, where they are. 
The faithful wife, the kind generous gentleman, have left a noble 
race behind them ; . an inheritor of his name and titles, who is 
beloved as widely as he is known ; a man most kind, accomplished, 
gentle, friendly, and pure ; and female descendants occupying high 
stations and embellishing great names ; some renowned for beauty, 
and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues. 

Another of Selwyn’s correspondents is the Earl of March, after- 
wards Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this century ; 
and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or greybeard, w^as 
not an ornament to any- possible society. The legends about old 
Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and contemporary chronicles, 
the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambling 
intriguing to the end of his career ; when the wrinkled, palsied, 
toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had 
been at the hottest season of youth and passion. There is a house 
in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at 
which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile 
glasses the women as they passed by. 

There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy 
sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. 
“Your friendship.” writes Carlisle to him, “is so different from 
anything I have ever met with or seen in the world, that when I 
recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, it seems to me 
like a dream.” “ I have lost my oldest friend and acquaintance, 
G. Selwyn,” writes Walpole to Miss Berry : “ I really loved him, 
not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities.” I 
am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale should 
have had a thousand good qualities — that he should have been 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


670 

friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trustworthy. “ I rise at six,’^ 
writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people 
in our ancestors’ days), “ play at cricket till dinner, and dance in 
the evening, till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a 
life for you ! You get up at nine ; play ^vith Raton your dog till 
twelve, in your dressing-gown ; then creep down to ‘ White’s ’ ; 
are five hours at table ; sleep till supper-time ; and then make 
two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret 
in you, three miles for a shilling.” Occasionally, instead of sleep- 
ing at “ White’s,” George went down and snoozed in the House of 
Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Gloucester 
for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for 
which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. 
“ I have given directions for the election of Ludgershall to be of 
Lord Melbourne and myself,” he writes to the Premier, whose friend 
he was, and who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good- 
natured as George. 

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and 
fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and 
criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and 
recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had 
we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and 
the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, 
with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be 
splendid and idle '? In these letters of Lord Carlisle’s from which 
I have been quoting, there is many a just complaint made by the 
kind-hearted young nobleman of the state which he is obliged to 
keep ; the magnificence in which he must live ; the idleness to 
which his position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him 
had he been a lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office ; — a thou- 
sand times better chance for happiness, education, employment, 
security from temptation. A few years since the profession of arms 
was the only one which our nobles could follow. The Church, the 
Bar, medicine, literature, the arts, commerce, were below them. It 
is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England : the 
working educated men, away from Lord North’s bribery in the 
senate ; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by hopes of 
preferment ; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence ; the painters 
pursuing their gentle calling; the men of letters in their quiet 
studies : these are the men whom we love and like to read of in 
the last age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look 
beside them ! how contemptible the stories of the George III. 
Court squabbles are beside the recorded talk of dear old Johnson ! 
What is the grandest entertainment at Windsor, compared to a 


GEORGE THE THIRD 


671 


night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy and Langton, 
and Goldsmith and poor Bozzy at the table ? I declare I think, of 
all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest 
gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those 
dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by 
excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day’s 
labour ; they rested, and took their kindly pleasure : they cheered 
their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of 
thought : they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their con- 
versation : they were merry, but no riot came out of their cups. 
All ! I would have liked a night at the “ Turk’s Head,” even though 
bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was 
growling against the rebels ; to have sat with him and Goldy ; 
and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world ; and 
to have had Garrick flashing in wdth a story from his theatre ! — I 
like, I say, to think of that society ; and not merely how pleasant 
and how wise, but how good they were. I think it was on going 
home one night from the club that Edmund Burke — his noble soul 
full of great thoughts, be sure, for they never left him ; his heart full 
of gentleness — was accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he 
spoke words of kindness ; and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, 
perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, 
he took her home to the house of his wife and children, and never 
left her until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty 
and labour. 0 you fine gentlemen ! you Marches, and Selw^yns, 
and Chesterfields, how small you look by the side of these great 
men ! Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, and dances 
in the evening “till he can scarcely crawl,” gaily contrasting his 
superior virtue with George Selwyn’s, “carried to bed by two 
wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him.” Do you 
remember the verses — the sacred verses — which Johnson wrote on 
the death of his humble friend Levett '? 

“ Well tried through many a varying year, 

See Levett to the grave descend ; 

Officious, innocent, sincere. 

Of every friendless name the friend. 

In misery’s darkest cavern known. 

His useful care was ever nigh. 

Where hopeless anguish poured the groan, 

And lonely want retired to die. 

No summons mocked by chill delay. 

No petty gain disdained by pride. 

The modest wants of every day 
The toil of every day supplied. 


672 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


His virtues walked their narrow round, 
Nor made a pause, nor left a void ; 
And sure the Eternal Master found 
His single talent well employed.” 


Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry 
the wealthy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor 
physician 1 

I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell 
some errors for embalming him for us 1) to be the great supporter 
of the British monarchy and Church during the last age — better 
than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and the 
great Burke himself. Jolmson had the ear of the nation : his 
immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of ^ 


irreligion. When George III. talked with him, and the people 
heard the great author’s good opinion of the Sovereign, whole 
generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered as a sort 
of oracle ; and the oracle declared for Church and King. What a 
humanity the old man had ! He was a kindly partaker of all 
honest pleasures : a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all 
sinners. What, boys, are you for a frolic 1” he cries, when Topham 
Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight ; “ I’m with you.” 
And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles 
through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to 
frequent Garrick’s theatre, and had “ the liberty of the scenes,” he 
says, “ All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsey as they 
passed to the stage.” That would make a pretty picture : it is a 
pretty picture, in my mind, of youth, foUy, gaiety, tenderly surveyed 
by wisdom’s merciful pure eyes. 

George III. and his Queen lived in a very unpretending but 
elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under which 
his granddaughter at present reposes. The King’s mother inhabited 
Carlton House, which contemporary prints represent with a perfect 
paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of 
classic statues. She admired these in company with my Lord Bute, 
who had a fine classic taste, and sometimes counsel took and some- 
times tea in the pleasant green arbours along with that polite noble- 
man. Bute was hated with a rage of which there have been few 
examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody’s 
abuse; for Wilkes’s devilish mischief ; for Churchill’s slashing satire; 
for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a 
thousand bonfires ; that hated him because he was a favourite and 
a Scotchman, calling him “Mortimer,” “Lothario,” I know not 
what names, and accusing his Royal mistress of all sorts of crimes 
— the grave, lean, demure elderly woman, who, I dare say, was 



DR. JOHNSON AND THE ACTRESSES. 






GEORGE THE THIRD 673 

quite as good as her neighbours. Chatham lent the aid of his great 
malice to influence the popular sentiment against her. He assailed, 
in the House of Lords, “ the secret influence, more mighty than the 
throne itself, which betrayed and clogged every administration.” 
The most furious pamphlets echoed the cry. “ Impeach the King’s 
mother,” was scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the 
town, Walpole tells us. What had she donel What had Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, George’s father, done, that he was so loathed by 
George II. and never mentioned by George III. Let us not seek 
for stones to battei- that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the con- 
temporary epitaph over him : — 

“ Here lies Fred, 

Who was alive, and is dead. 

Had it been his father, 

I had much rather. 

Had it been his brother. 

Still better than another. 

Had it been his sister. 

No one would have missed her. 

Had it been the whole generation, 

Still better for the nation. 

But since ’tis only Fred, 

Who was alive, and is dead. 

There’s no more to be said.” 

The widow with eight children round her prudently reconciled 
herself with the King, and won the old man’s confidence and good 
will. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded woman, she 
educated her children according to her lights, and spoke of the 
eldest as a dull good boy : she kept him Very close : she held the 
tightest rein over him : she had curious prejudices and bigotries. 
His uncle, the burly Cumberland, taking down a sabre once, and 
drawing it to amuse the child — the boy started back and turned 
pale. The Prince felt a generous shock : “ What must they have 
told him about me 1 ” he asked. 

His mother’s bigotry and hatred he inherited with the coura- 
geous obstinacy of his own race ; but he was a firm believer where 
his fathers had been freethinkers, and a true and fond supporter of 
the Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull 
men, the King was all his life suspicious of superior people. He 
did not like Fox ; he did not like Reynolds ; he did not like Nelson, 
Chatham, Burke ; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and 
suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities ; Benjamin 
West was his favourite painter ; Beattie was his poet. The King 
lamented, not without pathos, in his after life, that his education 
7 2 u 


6*74 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


had been neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow- 
niinded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have 
done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they 
might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some 
generosity. 

But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that 
a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg- 
Strelitz, — a letter containing the most feeble commonplaces about 
the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings 
of peace, — struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him upon 
selecting the young Princess as the sharer of his throne. I pass 
over the stories of his juvenile loves — of Hannah Lightfoot, the 
Quakeress, to whom they say he was actually married (though I 
don’t know who has ever seen the register) — of lovely black-haired 
Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, 
and who used to lie in wait for the young Prince, and make hay at 
him on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and he longed, 
but he rode away from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland 
House, a magnificent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas worthy of 
Titian. She looks from the castle window, holding a bird in her 
hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her nephew. The Royal 
bird fiew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as bridesmaid 
at her little Mecklenburg rival’s wedding, and died in our own 
time, a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic 
Napiers. 

They say the little Princess who had written the fine letter 
about the horrors of war— a beautiful letter without a single blot, 
for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old 
spelling-book story — was at play one day with some of her young 
companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies’ 
conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. “Who will 
take such a poor little princess as me?” Charlotte said to her 
friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman’s ! 
horn sounded, and Ida said, “ Princess ! there is the sweetheart.” 
As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters 
from the splendid young King of all England, who said, “ Princess ! 
because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit 
to your head and heart, come and be Queen of Great Britain, 
France, and Ireland, and the true wife of your most obedient 
servant, George ! ” So she jumped for joy ; and went upstairs and 
packed all her little trunks ; and set off straightway for her king- 
dom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for her to 
play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags 
and streamers : and the distinguished Madame Auerbach compli- 


(lEORGE THE THIRD 675 

iiieiited her with an ode, a translation of which may be read in the 
Gentleman’ s Magazine to the present day : — 

“ Her gallant navy through the main 
Now cleaves its liquid way. 

There to their queen a chosen train 
Of nymphs due reverence pay. 

Europa, when conveyed by J ove 
To Crete’s distinguished shore, 

Greater attention scarce could prove, 

Or be respected more.” 

They met, and they were married, and for years they led the 
happiest simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said 
the King winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; but, 
however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, 
as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest 
pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — little country dances, to 
which a dozen couples were invited, and where the honest King 
would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune ; 
after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any 
supper (the Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), 
and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next 
night have another dance ; or the Queen would play on the spinet 
— she played pretty well, Haydn said — or the King would read to 
her a paper out of the Spectator^ or perhaps one of Ogden’s sermons. 
0 Arcadia ! what a life it must have been ! There used to be 
Sunday drawing-rooms at Court ; but the young King stopped 
these, as he stopped all that godless gambliug whereof we have 
made mention. Not that George was * averse to any innocent 
pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a 
patron of the arts, after his fashion ; kind and gracious to the 
artists whom he favoured, and respectful to their calling. He 
M'anted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and 
scientific characters; the knights were to take rank after the 
Knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-coloured ribbon and a 
star of sixteen points. But there was such a row among the 
literati as to the persons who should be appointed, that the plan 
was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down 
amongst us. 

He objected to painting St. Paul’s, as Popish practice ; accord- 
ingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at 
present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for 
painting and drawing were woefully unsound at the close of the 
last century ; and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate white- 


676 


THE FOUK GEOEGES 


wash (when we turn them away from tlie clergyman) than to look 
at Opie’s pitchy canvases, or Fuseli’s livid monsters. 

And yet there is one day in the year — a day when old George 
loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think Saint Paul’s 
presents the noblest sight in the whole world : when five thousand 
charity children with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet fresh voices, 
sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and 
happiness I have seen a hundred grand sights in tiie world — 
coronations, Parisian splendours. Crystal Palace openings. Pope’s 
chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering 
choirs of fat soprani — but think in all Christendom there is no such 
sight as Charity Children’s Day. Won Angli, sed angeli. As one 
looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents : as the first note 
strikes : indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing. 

Of Church music the King was always very fond, showing 
skill in it both as a critic and as a performer. Many stories, mirth- 
ful and affecting, are told of his behaviour at the concerts which he 
ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the music for the 
Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he selected 
were from “ Samson Agonistes,” and all had reference to his blind- 
ness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat time with his 
music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Eoyal. If the 
page below was talkative or inattentive, down would come tlie 
music-roll on young scapegrace’s powdered head. The theatre was 
always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, 
thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. 
He is said not to have cared for Shakspeare or tragedy much ; farces 
and pantomimes were his joy ; and especially when clown swallowed 
a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that 
the lovely Princess by his side would have to say, “My gracious 
monarch, do compose yourself” But he continued to laugh, and at 
the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him. 

There is something to me exceedingly touching in tliat simple 
early life of the King’s. As long as his mother lived— a dozen 
years after his marriage with the little spinet-player — he was a 
great shy awkward boy under the tutelage of that hard parent. 
She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel woman. She kept 
her household lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all people 
who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke of Gloucester 
silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his 
silence. “I am thinking,” said the poor child. “Thinking, sir! 
and of what T’ “ I am thinking if ever I have a son I will not 
make him so unhappy as you make me.” The other sons were all 
wild, except George, Dutifully every evening George and Charlotte 


GEORGE THE THIRD 


677 


paid their visit to the King’s mother at Carlton House. She had 
a throat-complaint, of which she died ; but to the last persisted in 
driving about the streets to show she was alive. The night before 
her death the resolute woman talked with her son and daughter-in- 
law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead there in the morn- 
ing. “ George, be a King ! ” were the words which she was for 
ever croaking in the ears of her son : and a king the simple, stubborn, 
affectionate, bigoted man tried to be. 

He did his best ; he worked according to his lights ; what virtue 
he knew, he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could master, he 
strove to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for example, 
and learned geography with no small care and industry. He knew 
all about the family histories and genealogies of his gentry, and 
pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole Army 
List; and all the facings, and the exact number of the buttons, 
and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked-hats, pig- 
tails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the personnel of the 
Universities ; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who 
were sound Churchmen ; he knew the etiquettes of his own and 
Ids grandfather’s Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars 
regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences ; 
the humblest page in the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the 
stables or kitchen. These parts of the Royal business he was 
capable of learning, and he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, 
almost divine, performed by any mortal man — of any single being 
pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the 
implicit obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war 
at his offence or quarrel; to command, .“In this way you shall 
trade, in this way you shall think ; these neighbours shall be your 
allies whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom 
you shall slay at my orders; in this way you shall worship 
God ; ” — who can wonder that, when such a man as George took 
such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall 
upon people and chiefs 

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of 
the King with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian 
who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery 
panegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, 
with the people to back him, who made the war with America ; it 
was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics ; 
and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed : he 
bullied : he darkly dissembled on occasion ; he exercised a slippery 
perseverance, and a vindictive resolution, which one almost admires 
as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. 


678 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


It trampled North under foot : it bent the stiff neck of the younger 
Pitt : even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As 
soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside 
when his reason left him : as soon as his hands were out of the 
strait-waistcoat, tliey took up the pen and the plan which had 
engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by 
persons believing themselves in the right that nine-tenths of the 
tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that con- 
venient premiss, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of 
a morning; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the 
presence of the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of Toledo 
and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung 
and quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all 
by worthy people, who believed they had the best authority for 
their actions. 

And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he 
hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for having quite 
honest reasons for oppressing them. Appended to Lord Brougham’s 
biographical sketch of Lord North are some autograph notes of the 
King, which let us most curiously into the state of his mind. “ The 
times certainly require,” says he, “ the concurrence of all who wish 
to prevent anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own 
dominions, therefore I must look upon all who would not heartily 
assist me as bad men, as well as bad subjects.” That is the way he 
reasoned. “ I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does 
not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.” Remember that 
he believed himself anointed by a Divine commission ; remember 
that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect education ; that the 
same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his head, 
which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, courageous 
and honest, made him dull of comprehension, obstinate of will, and 
at many times deprived him of reason. He was the father of his 
people ; his rebellious children must be flogged into obedience. He 
was the defender of the Protestant faith ; he would rather lay that 
stout head upon tlie block than that Catholics should have a share 
in the government of England. And you do not suppose that there 
are not honest bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this 
kind of statesmanship 1 Without doubt the American war was 
popular in England. In 1775 the address in favour of coercing the 
colonies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 
in the House of Lords. Popular'? — so was the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes popular in France : so was the Massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew ; so was the Inquisition exceedingly popular 
in Spain, 


GEORGE THE THIRD 679 

Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician’s province. 
The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who 
illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the subjects of an hour’s 
light talk. Let us return to our humbler duty of Court gossip. 
Yonder sits our little Queen, surrounded by many stout sons and 
fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. The history 
of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is 
delightful. They were handsome — she calls them beautiful ; they 
were most kind, loving, and ladylike ; they were gracious to every 
person, high and low, who served them. They had many little 
accomplishments of their own. This one drew ; that one played 
the piano : they all worked most prodigiously, and fitted up whole 
suites of rooms — pretty smiling Penelopes, — with their busy little 
needles. As we picture to ourselves the society of eighty years 
ago, we must imagine hundreds of thousands of groups of women 
in great high caps, tight bodies and full skirts, needling away, 
whilst one of the number, or perhaps a favoured gentleman in a 
pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage 
at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady 
Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet pious women, and 
William Cowper, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that 
refined gentleman, absolutely reading out “Jonathan Wild” to 
the ladies ! What a change in our manners, in our amusements, 
since then ! 

King George’s household was a model of an English gentleman’s 
household. It was early ; it was kindly ; it was charitable ; it was 
frugal ; it was orderly ; it must have been stupid to a degree which 
I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran 
away from the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, 
rode, dined at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At 
the same hour at night the King kissed his daughters’ jolly cheeks ; 
the Princesses kissed their mother’s hand; and Madame Thielke 
brought the Royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and 
women in waiting had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea. 
The King had his backgammon or his evening concert ; the equerries 
yawned themselves to death in the ante-room ; or the King and his 
family walked on Windsor slopes, the King holding his darling little 
Princess Amelia by the hand ; and the people crowded round quite 
good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under 
the crowd’s elbows ; and the concert over, the King never failed 
to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, 
“ Thank you, gentlemen.” 

A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew or 
Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the King rode every 


680 THE FOUR GEORGES 

day for hours ; poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round 
about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor uniform to farmers, 
to pig-boys, to old women making apple-dumplings ; to all sorts of 
people, gentle and simple, about whom countless stories are told. 
Nothing can be more undignified than these stories. When Haroun 
Alraschid visits a subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much 
the better for the caliph’s magnificence. Old George showed no 
such Royal splendour. He used to give a guinea sometimes : some- 
times feel in his pockets and find he had no money : often ask a 
man a hundred questions — about the number of his family, about 
his oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house — and ride 
on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and 
turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager’s house. When 
the old woman came home, she found a paper with an enclosure 
of money, and a note written by the Royal pencil : “ Five guineas 
to buy a jack.” It was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy 
of Farmer George. One day, when the King and Queen were walk- 
ing together, they met a little boy — they were always fond of 
children, the good folk — and patted the little white head. “ Whose 
little boy are youl” asks the Windsor uniform. “I am the 
King’s beefeater’s little boy,” replied the child. On which the 
King said, “ Then kneel down, and kiss the Queen’s hand.” But 
the innocent offspring of the beefeater declined this treat. “No,” 
said he, “ I won’t kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches.” 
The thrifty King ought to have hugged him and knighted him on 
the spot. George’s admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories 
about him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the King 
walked about Gloucester town ; pushed over Molly the housemaid 
with her pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran upstairs and 
woke all the equerries in their bedrooms ; and then trotted down 
to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were assembled. 
“What! is this Gloucester New Bridge asked our gracious 
monarch ; and the people answered him, “Yes, your Majesty.” 
“ Why, then, my boys,” said he, “ let us have a huzzay 1 ” After 
giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to break- 
fast. Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleasure ; 
laughed at these very small jokes ; liked the old man who poked 
his nose into every cottage ; who lived on plain wholesome roast 
and boiled ; who despised your French kickshaws ; who was a 
true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray’s 
famous print of him — in the old wig, in the stout old hideous 
Windsor uniform — as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little 
Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has 
an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy '? Our fathers 


GEOKGE THE THIRD 681 

chose to set up George as the type of a great king ; and the little 
Gulliver was the great Napoleon. We prided ourselves on our 
prejudices ' we blustered and bragged with absurd vainglory • we 
dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt and scorn; 
we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There 
was no lie we would not believe ; no charge of crime which our 
furious prejudice would not credit. I thought at one time of making 
a collection of the lies which the French had written against us, 
and we had published against them during the war : it would be 
a strange memorial of popular falsehood. 

Their Majesties were very sociable potentates ; and the Court 
Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, 
gentle and simple : with whom they dined ; at whose great country- 
houses they stopped ; or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook 
of tea and bread-and-butter. Some of the great folk spent enor- 
mous sums in entertaining their Sovereigns. As marks of special 
favour, the King and Queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the 
children of the nobility. We find Lady Salisbury was so honoured 
in the year 1786; and in the year 1802, Lady Chesterfield. The 
Couri News relates how her Ladyship received their Majesties on 
a state bed “ dressed with white satin and a profusion of lace : the 
counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of 
crimson satin lined with white.” The child was first brought by 
the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. 
Then the Marchioness handed baby to the Queen. Then the Queen 
handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the oflBciating 
clergyman ; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was presented 
by the Earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, 
placed on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would occur in 
these interesting genuflectory ceremonies of Royal worship. Bubb 
Doddington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy man, in a most 
gorgeous Court-suit, had to kneel, Cumberland says, and was so 
fat and so tight that he could not get up again. “Kneel, sir, 
kneel ! ” cried my Lord-in-waiting to a country mayor who had to 
read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. 

“ Kneel, sir, kneel ! ” cries my Lord, in dreadful alarm. “ I can’t ! ” 
says the mayor, turning round ; “ don’t you see I have got a wooden 
leg ? ” In the capital “ Burney Diary and Letters,” the home and 
Court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte 
are presented at portentous length. The King rose every morning 
at six : and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate 
to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the Queen 
and tlie Royal family were always ready for him, and they pro- 
ceeded to the King’s chapel in the castle. There were no fires in 


682 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


the passages : the chapel was scarcely alight ; pri. icesses, governesses, 
equerries grumbled and cauglit cold : but cold or hot, it was tlieir 
duty to go : and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George 
was always in his place to say amen to the chaplain. 

The Queen’s character is represented in “ Burney ” at full 
length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman ; a very grand 
lady on State occasions, simple enough - in ordinary life ; well read 
as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books ; stingy, but 
not unjust : not generally unkind to her dependants, but invincible 
in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people suffered 
ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a shabby pittance, 
and led the poor young woman a life which well-nigh killed her. 
She never thought but that she was doing Burney the greatest 
favour, in taking her from freedom, fame, and competence, and 
killing her off with languor in that dreary Court. It was not 
dreary to her. Had she been servant instead of mistress, her spirit 
would never have broken down : she never would have put a pin 
out of place, or been a moment from her duty. She was not weak, 
and she could not pardon those who were. She was perfectly 
correct in life, and she hated poor sinners with a rancour such as 
virtue sometimes has. She must have had awful private trials of 
her own : not merely with her children, but with her husband, 
in those long days about which nobody will ever know anything 
now ; when he was not quite insane ; when his incessant tongue 
was babbling folly, rage, persecution ; and she had to smile and 
be respectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The 
Queen bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear 
them. At a State christening, the lady who held the infant was 
tired and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission 
for her to sit down. “ Let her stand,” said the Queen, flicking the 
snuff off' her sleeve. She would have stood, the resolute old woman, 
if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. “ I am 
seventy years of age,” the Queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who 
stopped her sedan : “I have been fifty years Queen of England, 
and I never was insulted before.” Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little 
queen ! I don’t wonder that her sons revolted from her. 

Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds 
George and his Queen, the prettiest, I think, is- the father’s darling, 
the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, her 
early death, and for the extreme passionate tenderness with which 
her father loved her. This was his favourite amongst all the 
children : of his sons, he loved the Duke of York best. Burney 
tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth, and how eager 
he was to have this darling son with him. The King’s house was 


f 


*r 



THE LAST DAYS OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 






CEORaE THE THIRD 685 

not big enougli to hold the Prince ; and his father had a portable 
house erected close to his own, and at huge pains, so that his dear 
Frederick should be near him. He clung on liis arm all the time 
of his visit : talked to no one else ; had talked of no one else for 
some time before. The Prince, so long expected, stayed but a 
single night. He had business in London the next day, he said. 
The dulness of the old King’s Court stupefied York and the other 
big sons of George III. They scared equerries and ladies, frightened 
the modest little circle, with their coarse spirits and loud talk. 
Of little comfort, indeed, were the King’s sons to the King. 

But the pretty Amelia was his darling ; and the little maiden, 
prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet 
image to look on. There is a family picture in “ Burney,” which 
a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She describes an 
after-dinner walk of the Royal family at Windsor. 

“ It was really a mighty pretty procession,” she says. “ The 
little Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered 
with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked 
on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning 
from side to side to see everybody as she passed ; for all the terracers 
stand up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the Royal 
family the moment they come in sight. Then followed the King 
and Queen, no less delighted with the joy of their little darling. 
The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the 
Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess 
Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed.” 

“ Office here takes place of rank,” says Burney, — to explain how 
it was that Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, as lady of the bedchamber, 
walked before a duchess. “General Bude, and the Duke of 
Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought up the rear of the 
procession.” 

One sees it ; the band playing its old music, the sun shining 
on the happy loyal crowd; and lighting the ancient battlements, 
the rich elms, and purple landscape, and bright greensward ; the 
Royal standard drooping from the great tower yonder ; as old George 
passes, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, who 
caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles. 

“ On sight of Mrs. Delany, the King instantly stopped to speak 
to her; the Queen, of course, and the little Princess, and all the 
rest, stood still. They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, 
during which time the King once or twice addressed himself to me. 
I caught the Queen’s eye, and saw in it a little surprise, but by no 
means any displeasure, to see me of the party. The little Princess 
went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very fond and behaved 


684 THE FOUR GEORGES 

like a little angel to her. She tlien, with a look of inquiry and 
recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. ‘ I am afraid,’ 
said I, in a whisper, and stooping down, ‘ your Royal Highness does 
not remember me 1 ’ Her answer was an arcli little smile, and a 
nearer apjiroach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me.” 

The Princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty 
plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than 
better poetry ; — 

“ Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, 

I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung: 

And, proud of health, of freedom vain, 

Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain ; 

Concluding, in those hours of glee, 

That all the world was made for me. 

But when the hour of trial came, 

When sickness shook this trembling frame. 

When folly’s gay pursuits were o’er, 

And I could sing and dance no more, 

It then occurred, how sad ’twould be, 

Were this world only made for me.” 

The poor soul quitted it— and ere yet she was dead the agonised 
father was in sucli a state, that the officers round about him 
were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November 1810 
George III. ceased to reign. All the world knows the story of his 
malady : all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, 
blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his 
palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, 
holding ghostly Courts. 1 have seen his picture as it was taken at 
this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine 
of Hesse Hombourg — amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a 
hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old 
father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over 
his breast — the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. 
He was not only sightless : he became utterly deaf. All light, all 
reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of 
God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had ; in 
one of which the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and 
found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harp- 
sichord. When he had finished he knelt down and prayed aloud 
for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding 
with a prayer for himself, tliat it might please God to avert his 
heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to 
submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. 


GEORGE THE THIRD 


685 


What preacher need moralise on this story ; what words save 
the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible for tears. 
The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before 
the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires 
and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, 
victory. “ 0 brothers,” I said to those who heard me first in 
America — “ 0 brothers ! speaking the same dear mother tongue — 
0 comrades ! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together 
as we stand by this Royal corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low 
he lies, to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast 
lower than the poorest : dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. 
Driven off his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; with his children 
in revolt ; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely ; 
our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, ‘ Cordelia, Cordelia, 
stay a little ! ’ 

‘ Vex not his ghost — oh! let him pass — he hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer ! ’ 

Hush ! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave ! Sound, trumpets, 
a mournful march I Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, 
his grief, his awful tragedy ! ” 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 


I N Twiss’s amusing “Life of Eldon,” we read how, on the death 
of the Duke of York, the old Chancellor became possessed of a 
lock of the defunct Prince’s hair ; and so careful was he respect- 
ing the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife sat in the 
room with the young man from Hamlet’s who distributed the ringlet 
into separate lockets, which each of the Eldon family afterwards 
wore. You know how, when George IV. came to Edinburgh, a 
better man than he went on board the Royal yacht to welcome the 
King to his kingdom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his 
Majesty had just drunk, vowed it should remain for ever as an heir- 
loom in his family, clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat 
down on it and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good 
sheriff’s prize unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not smile 
with something like pity as we beheld it 1 Suppose one of those 
lockets of the no-Popery Prince’s hair offered for sale at Christie’s, 
quot libras e duce simimo invenies how many pounds would you 
find for the illustrious Duke 1 Madame Tussaud has got King 
George’s coronation robes ; is there any man now alive who would 
kiss the hem of that trumpery 1 He sleeps since thirty years : do 
not any of you, who remembered him, wonder that you once re- 
spected and huzza’d and admired him 1 

To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small 
difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance 
simpering under it : with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at 
this very desk perform a recognisable likeness of him. And yet 
after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old 
magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a 
public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find you have nothing 
— nothing but a coat and a wig and a mask smiling below it — 
nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. 
One knows what they were like: what they would do in given 
circumstances : that on occasion they fought and demeaned them- 
selves like tough good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked 
according to their natures ; enemies whom they hated fiercely ; 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 687 

passions, and actions, and individualities of their o\^. The sailor 
King who came after George was a man : the Duke of York was a 
man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, 
what was he ? I look through all his life, and recognise but a bow and 
a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, 
stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue riband, a pocket 
handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt’s best nutty-brown 
wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under- 
waistcoats, more underwaistcoats, and then nothing. I know of no 
sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are published 
under his name, but people wrote them — private letters, but people 
spelt them. He put a great George P. or George R. at the bottom 
of the page and fancied he had written the paper : some bookseller’s 
clerk, some poor author, some man did the work; saw to the 
spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin 
slipslop a sort of consistency. He must have had an individuality ; 
the dancing-master whom he emulated, nay, surpassed — the wig- 
maker who curled his toupee for him — the tailor who cut his coats, 
had that. But about George, one can get at nothing actual. That 
outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor’s work ; there may be some- 
thing behind, but what '? We cannot get at the character ; no doubt 
never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do than 
to unswathe and interpret that Royal old mummy 1 I own I once 
used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, 
and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount and lay 
good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt the poor 
game 

On the 12th August 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of the 
accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, all the 
bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced that an heir 
to George III. was born. Five days afterwards the King was 
pleased to pass letters patent under the great seal, creating H.R.H. 
the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince of Brunswick Luneburg, 
Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Garrick, Baron of Renfrew, 
Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales 
and Earl of Chester. 

All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child ; 
and behind a gilt china-screen railing in Saint James’s Palace, in a 
cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich feathers, the Royal 
infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among the 
earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read tliat “a curious 
Indian bow and arrows were sent to the Prince from his father’s 
faithful subjects in New York.” He was fond of playing with these 
toys: an old statesman, orator and wit of his grandfather’s and 


688 


THE FOUR GEORGES 

great-grandfather’s time, never tired of his business, still eager in 
his old age to be well at Court, used to play with the little Prince, 
and pretend to fall down dead when the Prince shot at him with 
his toy bow and arrows — and get up and fall down dead over and 
over again — to the increased delight of the child. So that he was 
flattered from his cradle upwards ; and before his little feet could 
walk, statesmen and courtiers were busy kissing them. 

There is a pretty picture of the Royal infant — a beautiful buxom 
child — asleep in his mother’s lap ; who turns round and holds a 
finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around respect 
the baby’s slumbers. From that day until his decease, sixty-eight 
years after, I suppose there were more pictures taken of that per- 
sonage than of any other human being who ever was born and died 
— in every kind of uniform and every possible Court-dress — in long 
fair hair, with powder, with and without a pigtail — in every con- 
ceivable cocked-hat — in dragoon uniform — in Windsor uniform — in 
a field-marshal’s clothes — in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and 
claymore (a stupendous figure) — in a frogged frock-coat with a fur 
collar and tight breeches and silk stockings— in wigs of every colour, 
fair, brown, and black — in his famous coronation robes finally, with 
which performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies 
of the picture to all the Courts and British embassies in Europe, 
and to numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I remember 
as a young man how almost every dining-room had his portrait. 

There is plenty of biographical tattle about the Prince’s boy- 
hood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all 
languages, ancient and modern ; how he rode beautifully, sang 
charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he was 
beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit ; and once, 
when he had had a difference with his father, burst into the Royal 
closet and called out, “ Wilkes and liberty for ever ! ” He was so 
clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning ; and one 
of them, Lord Bruce, having made a false quantity in quoting Greek, 
the admirable young Prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce 
could not remain a governor after this humiliation ; resigned his 
office, and, to soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an 
earl ! It is the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that 
ever I heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in pro- 
sody ; and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile. 

Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions 
which in the course of his brilliant existence this single Prince 
consumed. Besides his income of .£50,000, £70,000, £100,000, 
£120,000 a year, we read of three applications to Parliament; 
debts to the amount of £160,000, of £650,000; besides 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 689 

mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What 
did he do for all this money 1 Why was he to have it ? If he 
had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or 
an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, 
one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight, — what 
had any mortal done that he should be pampered so 1 

In 1784, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton Palace 
was given to him, and furnished by the nation with as much luxury 
as could be devised. His pockets were filled with money : he said 
it was not enough; he filing it out of window : he spent £10,000 
a year for the coats on his back. The nation gave him more 
money, and more, and more. The sum is past counting. He was 
a prince most lovely to look on, and was christened Prince Florizel 
on his first appearance in the world. That he was the handsomest 
prince in the whole world was agreed by men, and alas ! by 
many women. 

I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so many 
testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must allow him 
great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and the King of 
France’s brother, the Count d’ Artois, a charming young Prince 
who danced deliciously on the tight-rope — a poor old tottering 
exiled King, who asked hospitality of King George’s successor, 
and lived awhile in the palace of Mary Stuart — divided in their 
youth the title of first gentlemen of Europe. We in England of 
course gave the prize to our gentleman. Until George’s death 
the propriety of that award was scarce questioned, or the doubters 
voted rebels and traitors. Only the other day I was reading in 
the reprint of the delightful “ Noctes ” of Christopher North. The 
healtli of THE KING is drunk in large capitals by the loyal 
Scotsman. You would fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a 
pattern for kings and men. It was Walter Scott who had that 
accident with the broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the King’s 
Scottish champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the 
fashion, and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the 
Prince’s enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as those 
two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Johnson, the Lichfield chapman’s 
son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer’s. 

Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare the 
Prince for being spoiled : the dreadful dulness of papa’s Court, its 
stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the maddening hum- 
drum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scape- 
grace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from 
that castle of ennui where old King George sat, posting up his 
books and droning over his Handel ; and old Queen Charlotte over 
7 2 X 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


690 

her snuff and lier tambour-frame. Most of the sturdy gallant sons 
settled down after sowing their wild oats, and became sober subjects 
of their father and brother — not ill liked by the nation, which 
pardons youthful irregularities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, 
and unaffectedness, and good-humour. 

The boy is father of the man. Our Prince signalised his 
entrance into the world by a feat worthy of his future life. He 
invented a new shoe-buckle. It was an inch long and five inches 
broad. “ It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down to 
the ground on either side of the foot.” A sweet invention ! lovely 
and useful as the Prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his first 
appearance at a Court ball, we read that “ his coat was pink silk, 
with white cuffs ; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with various- 
coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And 
his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand 
in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked 
in a new military style.” What a Florizel ! Do these details 
seem trivial? They are the grave incidents of his life. His 
biographers say that when he commenced housekeeping in that 
splendid new palace of his, the Prince of Wales had some windy 
projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts ; of having 
assemblies of literary characters ; and societies for the encourage- 
ment of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astronomy, geography, 
and botany ! Fiddlesticks ! French ballet-dancers, French cooks, 
horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, 
china, jewel, and gim crack merchants — these were his real com- 
panions. At first he made a pretence of having Burke and Fox 
and Sheridan for his friends. But how could such men be serious 
before such an empty scapegrace as this lad? Fox might talk 
dice with him, and Sheridan wine ; but what else had these men 
of genius in common with their tawdry young host of Carlton 
House ? That fribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke ! 
That man’s opinions about the Constitution, the India Bill, justice 
to the Catholics — about any question graver than the button for 
a waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge — worth anything ! The 
friendship between the Prince and the Whig chiefs was impossible. 
They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke 
the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him? His 
natural companions were dandies and parasites. He cmild talk 
to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal of great statesmen, to set 
up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, 
and levity incurable — it is absurd. They thought to use him, and 
did for a while ; but they must have known how timid he was ; how 
entirely heartless and treacherous, and have expected his desertion. 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 691 

His next set of friends were mere table companions, of whom he 
grew tired too ; then we hear of him with a very few select toadies, 
mere boys from school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled 
the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. What matters what friends 
he had ? He dropped all his friends ; he never could have real 
friends. An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who 
hang about him, ambitious men who use him * but friendship is 
denied him. 

And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealings 
with such a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, 
flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this Royal Hon Juan, and 
tell the names of the favourites to w’^hom, one after the other, George 
Prince flung his pocket-handkerchief? What purpose would it 
answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, deserted, and by 
whom succeeded? What good in knowing that he did actually 
marry Mrs. Fitz-Herbert according to the rites of the Roman 
Catholic Church ; that her marriage settlements have been seen 
in London ; that the names of the witnesses to her marriage are 
known ? This sort of vice that we are now come to presents no 
new or fleeting trait of manners. Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, 
fickle, cowardly, have been ever since the world began. This one 
had more temptations than most, and so much may be said in 
extenuation for him. 

It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to 
lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides being 
lovely, so that women were fascinated by him ; and heir-apparent, 
so that all the world flattered him; he should have a beautiful 
voice, which led him directly in the ,way of drink : and thus all 
the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel ; desire, and idle- 
ness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing their merry cymbals 
and bidding him come on. 

We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls 
of Kew Palace by the moonlit banks of Thames, with Lord Viscount 
Leporello keeping watch lest the music should be disturbed. 

Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of the 
day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, but 
some ribald, some harmless, all occasioning the consumption of a 
prodigious deal of fermented liquor. 

“The jolly Muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take, 

But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake,” 

sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the Prince 
many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is, — 

“And that I think’s a reason fair to drink and fill again.” 


692 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


This delightful boon companion of the Prince’s found “ a reason 
fliir ” to forego filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, gave 
up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and religious. The 
Prince’s table no doubt was a very tempting one. The wits came 
and did their utmost to amuse him. It is wonderful how the 
spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an aroma, when a great 
man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal Cavalier, the 
King’s true liegeman, the very best raconteur of his time, poured 
out with an endless generosity his store of old-world learning, 
kindness, and humour. Grattan contributed to it his wondrous 
eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for a while, 
and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in 
a twitter of indignation afterwards, and attacking the Prince with 
bill and claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting was long, 
and the butler tired of drawing corks. Remember what the usages 
of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming to the House of 
Commons after having drunk a bottle of port-wine at his own house, 
would go into Bellamy’s with Dundas, and help finish a couple 
more. 

You peruse volumes after volumes about our Prince, and find 
some half-dozen stock stories — indeed not many more — common to 
all the histories. He was good-natured; an indolent voluptuous 
prince, not unkindly. One story, the most favourable to him of 
all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was eager to hear all that 
could be said in behalf of prisoners condemned to death, and 
anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. He was kind to 
his servants. There is a story common to all the biographies, of 
Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be broken 
up, owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to practise, was 
discovered crying as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave 
a master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale 
is that of a groom of the Prince’s being discovered in com and oat 
peculations, and dismissed by the personage at the head of the 
stables ; the Prince had word of John’s disgrace, remonstrated with 
him very kindly, generously reinstated him, and bade him promise 
to sin no more — a promise which John kept. Another story is 
very fondly told of the Prince as a young man hearing of an officer’s 
family in distress, and how he straightway borrowed six or eight 
hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his hat, and so 
disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent money, 
too, to Sheridan on his deathbed, and would have sent more had 
not death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, 
there are a few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with 
whom he was brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 693 

friends. He was fond and familiar with them one day, and he 
passed them on the next without recognition. He used them, liked 
them, loved them perhaps, in his way, and then separated from 
them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on 
Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was 
very affectionate with that wretched Brummel, and on Thursday 
forgot him ; cheated him even out of a snuft'box which he owed the 
poor dandy ; saw him years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, 
when the bankrupt Beau sent him another snuffbox with some of 
the snuff he used to love, as a piteous token of remembrance and 
submission ; and the King took the snuff, and ordered his horses, 
and drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, 
favourite, rival, enemy, superior. In Wraxall there is some gossip 
about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous Duchess 
of Devonshire died — the lovely lady whom he used to call his 
dearest duchess once, and pretend to admire as all English society 
admired her — he said, “ Then we have lost the best-bred woman in 
England.” “Then we have lost the kindest heart in England,” 
said noble Charles Fox. On another occasion, when three noble- 
men were to receive the Garter, says Wraxall, “ A great personage 
observed that never did three men receive the order in so charac- 
teristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with 
a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown ; Lord B. came 
forward fawning and smiling like a courtier; Lord C. presented 
himself easy, unembarrassed, like a gentleman ! ” These are the 
stories one has to recall about the Prince and King — kindness to a 
housemaid, generosity to a groom, criticism on a bow. There are 
no better stories about him ; they are ipean and trivial, and they 
characterise him. The great war of empires and giants goes on. 
Day by day victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn smoky 
flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and 
laid at his feet; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, and 
gives the guerdon of valour to the conqueror. He ! Elliston the 
actor, when the Coronation was performed, in which he took the 
principal part, used to fancy himself the King, burst into tears, and 
hiccup a blessing on the people. I believe it is certain about 
George IV., that he had heard so much of the war, knighted so 
many people, and worn such a prodigious quantity of marshal’s 
uniforms, cocked-hats, cock’s feathers, scarlet and bullion in general, 
that he actually fancied he had been present in some campaigns, 
and, under the name of General Brock, led a tremendous charge of 
the German legion at Waterloo. 

He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society 
could have tolerated him? Would we bear him now? In this 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


694. 

quarter of a century, what a silent revolution has been working ! 
how it has separated us from old times and manners ! How it has 
changed men themselves ! I can see old gentlemen now among us, of 
perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable grey heads, 
fondling their grandchildren j and look at them, and wonder what 
they were once. That gentleman of the grand old school, when 
he was in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the Prince’s table, would 
fall under it night after night. Night after night that gentleman 
sat at Brooks’s or Raggett’s over the dice. If, in the petulance of 
play or drink, that gentleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbour, 
he and the other would infallibly go out and try to shoot each 
other the next morning. That gentleman would drive his friend 
Richmond, the black boxer, down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, 
and shout and swear, and hurrah with delight whilst the black man 
was beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a 
manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a bargeman 
in a street row. That gentleman has been in a watch-house. That 
gentleman, so exquisitely polite with ladies in a drawing-room, so 
loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among men in his 
youth, would swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I met 
lately a very old German gentleman, who had served in our army 
at the beginning of the century. Since then he has lived on his 
own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose language 
— the language of fifty years ago that is — he possesses perfectly. 
When this highly-bred old man began to speak English to me almost 
every other word he uttered was an oath ; as they used (they swore 
dreadfully in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, 
or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read Byron’s 
letters. So accustomed is the young man to oaths that he employs 
them even in writing to his friends, and swears by the post. Read 
his account of the doings of the young men at Cambridge, of the 
ribald professors, “ one of whom could pour out Greek like a drunken 
Helot,” and whose excesses surpassed even those of the young men. 
Read Matthews’s description of the boyish lordling’s housekeeping at 
Newstead, the skull-cup passed round, the monk’s dresses from the 
masquerade warehouse, in which the young scapegraces used to sit 
until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. “We 
come to breakfast at two or three o’clock,” Matthews says. “ There 
are gloves and foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or 
we fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the wolf.” A 
jolly life truly ! The noble young owner of the mansion writes 
about such affairs himself in letters to his friend Mr. John Jackson, 
pugilist, in London. 

All the Prince’s time teUs a similar strange story of manners 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 695 

and pleas\ire. In Wraxall we find the Prime Minister himself, 
the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with personages 
of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the Lord Chancellor, and 
Mr. Dimdas the Treasurer of the Navy. Wraxall relates how these 
tliree statesmen, returning after dinner from Addiscombe, found a 
turnpike open and galloped through it without paying the toll. The 
turnpike-man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss 
after them, but missed them ‘ and the poet sang — 

“ How as Pitt wandered darkling o’er the plain, 

His reason drown’d in Jenkinson’s champagne, 

A rustic’s hand, but righteous Fate withstood, 

Had shed a Premier’s for a robber’s blood.” 

Here we have the Treasurer of the Navy, the Lord High Chancellor, 
and the Prime Minister, all engaged in a most undoubted lark. In 
Eldon’s “ Memoirs,” about the very same time, I read that the bar 
loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John Scott himself; he 
was a good boy always ; and though he loved port-wine, loved his 
business and his duty and his fees a great deal better. 

He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party 
at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every 
year to the counsel. 

“On one occasion,” related Lord Eldon, “I heard Lee say, ‘I 
cannot leave Fawcett’s wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home 
immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we 
have to conduct to-morrow.’ 

“ ‘ Not I,’ said Davenport. ‘Leave my dinner and my wine to 
read a brief! No, no, Lee; that won’t do.’ 

“ ‘ Then,’ said Lee, ‘ what is to be done 1 who else is employed ? ’ 

“ Davenport. ‘ Oh I young Scott.’ 

“ Lee. ‘ Oh I he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home 
immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before 
our consultation this evening.’ 

“ This w^as very hard upon me ; but I did go, and there was an 
attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and I 
do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in came Jack 
Lee, as drunk as he could be. 

“ ‘ I cannot consult to-night ; I must go to bed,’ he exclaimed, 
and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport. 

“‘We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth’ 
(Wordsworth, I think, was the name ; it was a Cumberland name), 
shouted Davenport. ‘ Don’t you see how drunk Mr. Scott is '2 it is 
impossible to consult.’ Poor me I who had scarce had any dinner, 
and lost all my wine — I was so drunk that I could not consult! 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


696 

Well, a verdict was given against us, and it was all owing to 
Lawyer Fawcett’s dinner. We moved for a new trial ; and I must 
say, for the honour of the bar, that those two gentlemen. Jack Lee 
and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of 
the first trial. It is the only instance I ever knew ; but they did. 
We moved for a new trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel 
not being in their senses), and it was granted. When it came on, 
the following year, the judge rose and said — 

“ ‘ Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett yester- 
day? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next year.’ 

“ There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time.” 

On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must 
needs be going the Northern Circuit, “ we found him,” says Mr. 
Scott, “lying upon the pavement inebriated. We subscribed a 
guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his clerk” — (no 
doubt there was a large bar, so that Scott’s joke did not cost him 
much) — “and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief, 
with instructions to move for what we denominated the writ of 
quare adhcBsit pavimento ; with observations duly calculated to 
induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the 
necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he was to move.” 
Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books that might 
enable him to distinguish himself — but in vain. He moved, how- 
ever, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations 
in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience 
amazed. The judge said, “ I never heard of such a writ — what can 
it be that adheres pavimento ? Are any of you gentlemen at the 
bar able to explain this ? ” 

The bar laughed. At last one of them said — 

“ My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhoesit pavimento. There 
was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, 
and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement.” 

The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the 
Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of Saint Paul’s, 
he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how 
he should move some especially fine claret, about which he was 
anxious. 

“ Pray, my Lord Bishop,” says Hay, “ how much of the wine 
have you ? ” 

The Bishop said six dozen. 

“ If that is all,” Hay answered, “ you have but to ask me six 
times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself.” 

There were giants in tfiose days ; but this joke about wdne is 
not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Tlielwall, in the heat 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 697 

of the hrencli Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of 
porter. He blew the head off, and said, “This is the way I would 
serve all kings.” 

Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings 
recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney’s 
“ Memoirs.” She represents a prince of the Blood in quite a Royal 
condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, creaking boots 
and rattling oaths of the young princes appear to have frightened 
the prim household of Windsor, and set all the teacups twittering 
on the tray. On the night of a ball and birthday, when one of 
the pretty kind princesses was to come out, it was agreed that her 
brother. Prince William Henry, should dance the opening minuet 
with her, and he came to visit the household at their dinner. 

“ At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnificently ; 
Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and Stanhope 
dined with us ; and while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of 
Clarence entered. 

“ He was just risen from the King’s table, and waiting for his 
equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an 
idea of the energy of His Royal Highness’s language, I ought to 
set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain 
forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colours a 
Royal sailor. 

“We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentle- 
men placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left 
the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and called the men 
back to hand about some wine. He was in exceeding high spirits, 
and in the utmost good-humour. He jdgced himself at the head 
of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and looked remarkably well, 
gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet clever withal, as well as 
comical. 

“ ‘ Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the King 
at Saint James’s on his birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his 
Majesty’s health ’ 

“ ‘ No, your Royal Highness ; your Royal Highness might make 
dem do dat,’ said Mrs. Schwellenberg. 

“ ‘ Oh, by , I will ! Here, you ’ (to the footman), ‘ bring 

champagne ; I’ll drink the King’s health again, if I die for it. Yes, 
I have done it pretty well already; so has the King, I promise 
you ! I believe his Majesty was never taken such good care of 
before ; we have kept his spirits up, I promise you ; we have 
enabled him to go through his fatigues ; and I should have done 
more still, but for the ball and Mary ; — I have promised to dance 
with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary.’ ” 


698 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages reporting 
H.R.H.’s conversation, and indicating, with a humour not unworthy 
of the clever little author of “ Evelina,” the increasing state of 
excitement of the young sailor Prince, who drank more and more 
champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellenberg’s remonstrances by 
giving the old lady a kiss, and telling her to hold her potato-trap, 
and who did not “ keep sober for Mary.” Mary had to find another 
partner that night, for the Royal William Henry could not keep 
his legs. 

Will you have a picture of the amusements of another Royal 
Prince? It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the 
beloved Commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom 
George IV. had had many a midnight carouse, and who continued 
his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout body. 

In Piickler Muskau’s “Letters,” that German prince describes 
a bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerful 
toper that “ six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a per- 
ceptible change in his countenance.” 

“I remember,” says Piickler, “that one evening — indeed, it 
was past midnight — he took some of his guests, among whom were 
the Austrian ambassador. Count Meervelt, Count Beroldingen, and 
myself, into his beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several 
Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp ; whence it 
happened that the Duke and Meervelt both scratched themselves 
with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to draw blood. Meervelt 
then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a Damascus, and 
attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood on the 
table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, 
candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. 
While we were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, 
the Duke’s aide-de-camp stammered out in great agitation, ‘ By 
G — , sir, I remember the sword is poisoned ! ’ 

“You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at 
this intelligence ! Happily, on further examination, it appeared 
that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel’s 
exclamation.” 

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in 
which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the 
realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took 
place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a 
gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray’s caricatures, 
and amongst Fox’s jolly associates, there figures a great nobleman, 
the Duke of Norfolk, called Jocky of Norfolk in his time, and 
celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the 


I 



t 



THE FIRST GENTLEMAN OP EUROPE, 









GEORGE THE FOURTH 699 

Prince, like the rest of the Whigs ; but a sort of reconciliation had 
taken place ; and now, being a very old man, the Prince invited 
him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old Dnke drove over 
from his Castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of grey horses, 
still remembered in Sussex. 

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his Royal brothers a 
notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at 
table was enjoined to drink wine with the Duke — a challenge which 
the old toper did not refuse. He soon began to see that there was 
a conspiracy against him ; he drank glass for glass ; he overthrew 
many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of Europe pro- 
posed bumpers of brandy. One of the Royal brothers filled a great 
glass for the Duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. “ Now,” 
says he, “ I will have my carriage, and go home.” The Prince 
urged upon him his previous promise to sleep under the roof where 
he had been so generously entertained. “No,” he said; he had 
had enough of such hospitality. ^A trap had been set for him; he 
would leave the place at once and never enter its doors more. 

The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour’s 
interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man ; his 
host’s generous purpose was answered, and the Duke’s old grey head 
lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was 
announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, and stumbling in, 
bade the postillions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half-an- 
hour round and round the Pavilion lawn ; the poor old man fancied 
he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was in bed 
at the Prince’s hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place 
now for sixpence : they have fiddlers thqre every day ; and some- 
times buffoons and mountebanks hire the Riding House and do 
their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the 
gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can 
fancy the flushed faces of the Royal Princes as they support them- 
selves at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk’s disgrace; 
but I can’t fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be 
called a gentleman. 

From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of 
which in his youth our Prince was a great practitioner. He was a 
famous pigeon for the play-men; they lived upon him. Egalit^ 
Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A noble lord, 
whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said to have mulcted 
him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where play was 
then almost universal; and as it was known his debts of honour 
were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase 
his notes of hand. His transactions on the turf were unlucky as 


700 THE FOUR GE;0RGES 

well as discreditable : though I believe he, and his jockey, and his 
horse. Escape, were all innocent in that aflair which created so 
much scandal. 

Arthur’s, Almack’s, Bootle’s, and White’s were the chief clubs 
of the young men of fiishion. There was play at all, and decayed 
noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In 
Selwyn’s “ Letters ” we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queens- 
berry all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful 
gambler, was cheated in very late times — lost £200,000 at play. 
Gibbon tells of his playing for twenty-two hours at a sitting, and 
losing £500 an hour. That indomitable punter said that the 
greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing. What hours, 
what nights, what health did he waste over the devil’s books ! I 
was going to say what peace of mind ; but he took his losses very 
philosophically. After an awful night’s play, and the enjoyment of 
the greatest pleasure but one in life, he was found on a sofa tran- 
quilly reading an Eclogue of Virgil. 

Play survived long after the wild Prince and Fox had given up 
the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummel — how 
many names could I mention of men of the world who have suffered 
by it ! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which pretty nigh put an 
end to gambling in England. A peer of the realm was found cheat- 
ing at whist, and repeatedly seen to practise the trick called muter 
la coupe. His friends at the clubs saw him cheat, and went on 
playing with him. One greenhorn, who had discovered his foul 
play, asked an old hand what he should do. “ Do ! ” said the 
Mammon of Unrighteousness. “ Back him., you fool I ” The best 
efforts were made to screen him. People wrote him anonymous 
letters and warned him ; but he would cheat, and they were obliged 
to find him out. Since that day, when my Lord’s shame was made 
public, the gaming-table has lost all its splendour. Shabby Jews 
and blacklegs prowl about race-courses and tavern parlours, and now 
and then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad 
cars ; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers bankrupt, and 
her table in rags. 

So is another famous British institution gone to decay — the 
Ring : the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth was 
still almost flourishing. ' 

The Prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this national 
sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been before him; 
but, being present at a fight at Brighton, where one of the com- 
batants was killed, the Prince pensioned the boxer’s widow, and 
declared he never would attend another battle. “But, nevertheless” 
— I read in the noble language of Pierce Egan (whose smaller work 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 


701 


on Pugilism I have the honour to possess) — “ he thought it a manly 
and decided English feature, which ought not to be destroyed. His 
Majesty had a drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives Court 
placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attachment and 
support of true courage ; and when any fight of note occurred after 
he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his desire.” That 
gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation ; — at ease in a 
Royal dressing-gown ; — too majestic to read himself, ordering the 
Prime Minister to read him accounts of battles : how Cribb punched 
Molyneux’s eye, or Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken. 

Where my Prince did actually distinguish himself was in driving. 
He drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton to Carlton 
House — fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day were fond 
of that sport. But the fashion of rapid driving deserted England ; 
and, I believe, trotted over to America. Where are the amusements 
of our youth? I hear of no gambling now but amongst obscure 
rutfians ; of no boxing but amongst the lowest rabble. One solitary 
four-in-hand still drove round the parks in London last year; but 
that charioteer must soon disappear. He was very old ; he was 
attired after the fashion of the year 1825. He must drive to the 
banks of Styx ere long, — where the ferry-boat waits to carry him 
over to the defunct revellers who boxed and gambled and drank and 
drove with King George. 

The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must have 
it, that George possessed it, are points which all English writers 
have agreed to admit ; and yet I cannot see how George IV. should 
have been endowed with this quality. Swaddled in feather-beds all 
his life, lazy, obese, perpetually eating and drinking, his education 
was quite unlike that of his tough old progenitors. His grandsires 
had confronted hardship and war, and ridden up and fired their 
pistols undaunted into the face of death. His father had conquered 
luxury and overcome indolence. Here was one who never resisted 
any temptation ; never had a desire but he coddled and pampered 
it ; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and 
tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera-dancers. 
What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life — a life that was 
never strung up to any action — an endless Capua without any 
campaign — all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and 
folly? When George III. was pressed by the Catholic Question 
and" the India Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover rather than 
yield upon either point; and he would have done what he said. 
But, before yielding, he was determined to fight his Ministers and 
Parliament ; and he did, and he beat them. The time came when 
George IV. was pressed too upon the Catholic claims ; the cautious 


702 THE FOUR GEORGES 

Peel had slipped over to that side ; the grim old Wellington had 
joined it; and Peel tells us, in his “Memoirs,” what was the 
conduct of the King. He at first refused to submit ; whereupon 
Peel and the Duke offered their resignations, which their gracious 
master accepted. He did these two gentlemen the honour. Peel 
says, to kiss them both when they went away. (Fancy old 
Arthur’s grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses 
it !) When they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and 
wrote to them a letter begging them to remain in office, and allow- 
ing them to have their way. Then his Majesty had a meeting 
with Eldon, which is related at curious length in the latter’s 
“Memoirs.” He told Eldon what was not true about his inter- 
view with the new Catholic converts ; utterly misled the old ex- 
Cliancellor ; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. 
We know old Eldon’s own tears were pumped very freely. Did 
these two fountains gush together'? I can’t fancy a behaviour 
more unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a defender of the faith ! 
This a chief in the crisis of a great nation ! This an inheritor of 
the courage of the Georges ! 

Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty 
old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy, prudent, 
and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesbury, and fetched away 
Princess Caroline, for her longing husband, the Prince of Whales. 
Old Queen Charlotte would have had her eldest son marry a niece 
of her own, that famous Louisa of Strelitz, afterwards Queen of 
Prussia, and who shares with Marie Antoinette in the last age the 
sad pre-eminence of beauty and misfortune. But George III. had 
a niece at Brunswick ; she was a richer Princess than Her Serene 
Highness of Strelitz ; — in fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to 
marry the heir to the English throne. We follow my Lord Malmes- 
bury in quest of her; we are introduced to her illustrious father 
and Royal mother ; we witness the balls and fetes of the old Court ; 
we are presented to the Princess herself, with her fair hair, her 
blue eyes, and her impertinent shoulders — a lively, bouncing, romp- 
ing Princess, who takes the advice of her courtly English mentor 
most generously and kindly. We can be present at her very 
toilette, if we like; regarding which, and for very good reasons, 
the British courtier implores her to be particular. What a strange 
Court ! What a queer privacy of morals and manners do we look 
into ! Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and cry Woe, 
against the open vice and selfishness and corruption ; or look at it 
as we do at the king in the pantomime, with his pantomime wife 
and pantomime courtiers, whose big lieads he knocks together, 
whom he pokes with his pantomime sceptre, whom he orders to 


GEOllGE THE FOURTH 703 

prison under the guard of his pantomime beefeaters, as he sits down 
to dine on his pantomime pudding 1 It is grave, it is sad : it is 
theme most curious for moral and political speculation ; it is 
monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, 
etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities ; it is as serious as a 
sermon ; and as absurd and outrageous as Punch’s puppet-show. 

Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the Duke, Princess 
Caroline’s father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms 
against the French ; presents us to his courtiers, his favourite ; his 
Duchess, George III.’s sister, a grim old Princess, who took the 
British envoy aside and told him wicked old stories of wicked old 
dead people and times ; who came to England afterwards when her 
nephew was Regent, and lived in a shabby furnished lodging, old, 
and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, but somehow Royal. And 
we go with him to the Duke to demand the Princess’s hand in 
form, and we hear the Brunswick guns fire their adieux of salute, 
as H.R.H.,the Princess of Wales departs in the frost and snow; 
and we visit the domains of the Prince Bishop of Osnaburg — the 
Duke of York of our early time; and we dodge about from the 
French revolutionists, whose ragged legions are pouring over Holland 
and Germany and gaily trampling down the old world to the tune 
of “ Ca ira ; ” and we take shipping at Stade, and we land at 
Greenwich, where the Princess’s ladies and the Prince’s ladies are 
in waiting to receive Her Royal Highness. 

What a history follows ! Ai'rived in London, the bridegroom 
hastened eagerly to receive his bride. When she was first presented 
to him. Lord Malmesbury says she very properly attempted to 
kneel. “He raised her gracefully enough, embraced her, and 
turning round to me, said — 

“ ‘ Harris, I am not well ; pray get me a glass of brandy.’ 

“ I said, ‘ Sir, had you not better have a glass of water % ’ 

“Upon which, much out of humour, he said, with an oath, 

‘ No ; I will go to the Queen.’ ” 

What could be expected from a wedding which had such a 
beginning — from such a bridegroom and such a bride? I am not 
going to carry you through the scandal of that story, or follow the 
poor Princess through all her vagaries; her balls and her dances, 
her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs, and her junketings, 
and her tears. As I read her trial in history, I vote she is not 
guilty. I don’t say it is an impartial verdict ; but as one reads her 
story the heart bleeds for the kindly, generous, outraged creature. 
If wrong there be, let it lie at his door who wickedly thrust her 
from it. Spite of her follies, the great hearty people of England 
loved, and protected, and pitied her. “God bless you! we will 


704 THE FOUR GEORGES 

bring your husband back to you,” said a mechanic one day, as she 
told Lady Charlotte Bury with tears streaming down her cheeks. 
They could not bring that husband back ; they could not cleanse that 
selfish heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded ? Steeped in 
selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love, 

— had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion 1 

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story ; — how 
the Prince reeled into chapel to be married ; how he hiccupped out 
his vows of fidelity — you know how he kept them : how he pursued 
the woman whom he had married ; to what a state he brought her ; 
with what blows he struck her ; with what malignity he pursued 
her ; what his treatment of his daughter was ; and what his own 
life. Re the first gentleman of Europe ! There is no stronger 
satire on the proud English society of that day, than that they 
admired George. 

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen ; and whilst 
our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image of pride, 
vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over which the last 
George pretended to reign, some who merit indeed the title of 
gentlemen, some who make our hearts beat when we hear their . 
names, and whose memory we fondly salute when that of yonder 
imperial mannikin is tumbled into oblivion. I will take men of 
my own profession of letters. I will take Walter Scott, who loved : 
the King, and who was his sword and buckler, and championed him 
like that brave Highlander in his own story, who fights round his 
craven chief. What a good gentleman ! What a friendly soul, 
what a generous hand, what an amiable life was .that of the noble 5 
Sir Walter ! I will take another man of letters, whose life I admire . 
even more, — an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years 
of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by day working for \ 
scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful ] 
to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path, | 
for popular praise or princes’ favour : — I mean Robert Southey. •: 
We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind ; t 
we protest against his dogmatism ; nay, we begin to forget it and • 
his politics ; but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is ' 
sublime in its simplicity, its energy, its honour, its affection. In 
the combat between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former 
destroyer lias conquered. Kehama’s Curse frightens very few 
readers now ; but Southey’s private letters are worth piles of epics, : 
and are sure to last among us as long as kind hearts like to sympa- 
thise with goodness and purity, and love and upriglit life. 

“ If your feelings are like mine,” he writes to his wife, “ I will 
not go to Lisbon without you, or I will stay at home, and not jiart 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 


705 

from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you 
I am not happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little 
Edith’s, I will not consent to any separation ; the growth of a 
year’s love between her and me, if it please God she should live, 
is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable in its conse- 
quences, to be given up for any light inconvenience on your part or 
mine. ... On these things we will talk at leisure ; only, dear, 
dear Edith, we must not part ! ” 

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in 
Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so 1 Was 
he faithful to them '? Did he sacrifice ease for them, or show them 
the sacred examples of religion and honour? Heaven gave the 
Great English Prodigal no such good fortune. Peel proposed to 
make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the King 
agreed. The poet nobly rejected the offered promotion. 

“I have,” he wrote, “a pension of £200 a year, conferred upon 
me by the good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I have the 
laureateship. The salary of the latter was immediately appro- 
priated, as far as it went, to a life insurance for £3000, which, 
with an earlier insurance, is the sole provision I have made for my 
family. All beyond must be derived from my own industry. 
Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have gained; for, 
having also something better in view, and never, therefore, having 
courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has 
not been possible for me to lay by anything. Last year, for the 
first time in my life, I was provided with a year’s expenditure be- 
forehand. This exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise 
it would be to accept the rank which, so greatly to my honour, you 
have solicited for me.” 

How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his master ! 
His acceptance even of a pension was made the object of his oppo- 
nents’ satire : but think of the merit and modesty of this State 
pensioner; and that other enormous drawer of public money, who 
receives £100,000 a year, and comes to Parliament with a request 
for £650,000 more ! 

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood ; 
and I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a 
better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read 
performed by others ; but where of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful 
life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart? Beyond dazzle of success 
and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a hundred times 
higher the sublime purity of Collingwood’s gentle glory. His 
heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His love, and 
goodness, and piety make one thrill with happy emotion. As one 
7 2 y 


706 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


reads of him and his great comrade going into the victory with 
which their names are immortally connected, how the old English 
word comes np, and that old English feeling of what I should like 
to call Christian honour ! What gentlemen they were, what great 
hearts they had! “We can, my dear Coll,” writes Nelson to him, 
“ have no little jealousies ; we have only one great object in view, 
— that of meeting the enemy, and getting a glorious peace for our 
country.” At Trafalgar, when the Royal Sovereign was pressing 
alone into the midst of the combined fleets. Lord Nelson said to 
Captain Blackwood : “ See how that noble fellow, Collingwood, 
takes his ship into action ! How I envy him ! ” The very same 
throb and impulse of heroic generosity was beating in Collingwood’s 
honest bosom. As he led into the fight, he said : “ What would 
Nelson give to be here ! ” 

After the action of the 1st of June, he writes : — 

“We cruised for a few days, like disappointed people looking 
for what they could not find, until the morning of little Sarah’s 
birthday^ between eight and nine o’clock, when the French fleet, 
of twenty-five sail of the line, was discovered to windward. We 
chased them, and they bore down within about five miles of us. 
The night was spent in watching and preparation for the succeeding 
day; and many a ble.ssing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I 
should never bless her more. At dawn, we made our approach on 
the enemy, then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was about eight 
when the admiral made the signal for each ship to engage her 
opponent, and bring her to close action ; and then down we went 
under a crowd of sail, and in a manner that would have animated the 
coldest heart, and struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. The 
ship we were to engage was two ahead of the French admiral, so we 
had to go through his fire and that of two ships next to him, and 
received all their broadsides two or three times before we fired a 
gun. It was then near ten o’clock. I observed to the admiral that 
about that time our wives were going to church, but that I thought 
the peal we should ring about the Frenchman’s ear would outdo 
their parish bells.” 

There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the 
simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but 
love sublimer and superior. Here is a Christian soldier spending 
the night before battle in watching and preparing for the succeeding 
day, thinking of his dearest home, and sending many blessings forth 
to his Sarah, “ lest he should never bless her more.” Who would 
not say Amen to his supplication? It was a benediction to his 
country — the prayer of that intrepid loving heart. 

We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters as 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 


707 


specimens of English gentlemen of the age just past : may we not 
also — many of my elder hearers, I am sure, have read, and fondly 
remember, his delightful story — speak of a good divine, and mention 
Reginald Heber as one of the best of English gentlemen'? The 
charming poet, the happy possessor of all sorts of gifts and accom- 
plishments, birth, wit, fame, high character, competence — he was 
the beloved parish priest in his own home of Hodnet, “ counselling 
his people in their troubles, advising them in their difficulties, com- 
forting them in distress, kneeling often at their sick-beds at the 
hazard of his own life; exhorting, encouraging where there was 
need; where there was strife, the peacemaker; where there was 
want, the free giver.” 

When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at 
first ; but after communing with himself (and committing his case 
to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry their 
doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for his 
mission and to leave his beloved parish. “ Little children, love one 
another, and forgive one another,” were the last sacred w^ords he 
said to his w'eeping people. He parted with them, knowing, per- 
haps, he should see them no more. Like those other good men of 
whom we have just spoken, love and duty were his life’s aim. 
Happy he, happy they who were so gloriously faithful to both ! 
He writes to his wife those charming lines on his journey : — ^ 

“ If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee, 

How gladly would our pinnace glide o’er Gunga’s mimic sea ! 

I miss thee at the dawning grey, when, on qur deck reclined, 

In careless ease my limbs I lay and woo the cooler wind. 

I miss thee when by Gunga’s stream my twilight steps I guide ; 

But most beneath the lamp’s pale beam I miss thee by my side. 

I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer ; 

But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear. 

But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee, 

I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me. 

Then on ! then on ! where duty leads my course be onward still— 

O’er broad Hindostan’s sultry meads, or bleak Almorah’s hill. 


That course nor Delhi’s kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain, 

For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main. 

Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue sea : 
But ne’er were hearts so blithe and gay as then shall meet in thee ! 


708 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith 1 His 
affection is part of his life. What were life without it ? Without 
love, I can fancy no gentleman. 

How touching is a remark Heber makes in his “ Travels through 
India,” that on inquiring of the natives at a town, which of the 
governors of India stood highest in the opinion of the people, he 
found that, though Lord Wellesley and Warren Hastings were 
honoured as the two greatest men who had ever ruled this part of 
the world, the people spoke with chief affection of Judge Cleveland, 
who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 1784. The people have built 
a monument over him, and still hold a religious feast in his memory. 
So does his own country still tend with a heart’s regard the memory 
of the gentle Heber. 

And Cleveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the heathen, 
is he? Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the life of our 
friend the First Gentleman of Europe. Do you not know that he 
was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton House with a 
grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and doubtless wore that 
lovely pink coat which we have described. I was eager to read 
about the ball, and looked to the old magazines for information. 
The entertainment took place on the 10th February. In the 
European Magazine of March 1784 I came straightway upon it : — • 
f. “ The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay 
before our readers a description of the State apartments as they 
appeared on the 10th instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball to 
the principal nobility and gentry. . . . The entrance to the State 
room fills the mind with an inexpressible idea of greatness and 
splendour. 

“The State chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson 
damask ; on each corner of the feet is a lion’s head, expressive of 
fortitude and strength ; the feet of the chair have serpents twining 
round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne, appears the 
helmet of Minerva ; and over the windows, glory is represented by 
Saint George with a superb gloria. 

“ But the saloon may be styled the chef d’ oeuvre^ and in every 
ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured 
lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the 
same colour. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paint- 
ings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, 
Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed 
here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the extra- 
ordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. They 
each consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for the 
reception of lights. A beautiful figure of a rural nympli is repre- 


GEORGE THE FOURTH 


709 

sen ted entwining the stems of the tree with wreaths of flowers. In 
the centre of the room is a rich chandelier. To see this apartment 
dans son phis heau jonr^ it should be viewed in the glass over the 
chimney-piece. The range of apartments from the saloon to the 
ball-room, when the doors are open, formed one of the grandest 
spectacles that ever was beheld.” 

In the Gentleman's Magazine, for the very same month and 
year — March 1784 — is an account of another festival, in vliich 
another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as 
taking a principal sliare : — 

“ According to order, H.E. the Commander-in-Chief was ad- 
mitted to a public audience of Congress ; and, being seated, the 
President, after a pause, informed him that the United States 
assembled were ready to receive his communications. Whereupon 
he arose, and spoke as follows : — 

“‘Mr. President, — The great events on which my resignation 
depended having at length taken place, I present myself before 
Congress to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, 
and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my 
country. 

“ ^ Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sove- 
reignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence ; which, 
however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of oi, • 
cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation and the 
patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my official life by 
commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection 
of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them 
to His holy keeping. Having finished » the work assigned me, I 
retire from the great theatre of action ; and, bidding an affectionate 
farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long 
acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of the employ- 
ments of my public life.’ 

“ To which the President replied : — 

“ ‘ Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New 
World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and those 
who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your fellow- 
citizens ; though the glory of your virtues will not terminate with 
your military command, but will descend to remotest ages.’ ” 

AVhich was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed, — the 
opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of 
Washington 1 Which is the noble character for after ages to admire, 
— yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who 
sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honour, a purity un re- 
proached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate victory ? Which 


710 


THE FOUR GEORGES 


of these is the true gentleman '! What is it to be a gentleman ? Is 
it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour 
virgin ; to have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and the love of 
your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with 
constancy ; and through evil or good to maintain truth always ? 
Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these qualities, and 
him we will salute as gentleman, whatever his rank may be ; show 
me the prince who possesses them, and he may be sure of our love 
and loyalty. The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George III., 
— not because he was wise and just, but because he was pure in life, 
honest in intent, and because according to his lights he worshipped 
Heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre a 
wiser rule and a life as honourable and pure ; and I am sure the 
future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that 
good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue 


CHARITY AND HDMOUR 



• 1 ^ y.. .w- ^ ; 

^v,. - V 

. '>v ^ ^ 

t "r 


li ' ’ 1 ** Q “"a ’♦ : ^ •'!_ • 

v . "‘i-’ 

'*vl ,T'V; »’' * .' ■ 



yk 


^ w r* • -• ■. 

‘ * * ■■' W 




'k 

# I 


« t* 


*? f* 


?A I ■ »-* ■ * * * ■ ' 

, Tt-> t ' p;, * ■Mi .p */■’’.«? */*.y 
. *'•■- ,*i 


V if*"!!*, * 


f T‘ 


L .; 




m 


I? W !)* ^ s' 




L-r u 



If 






p»:A isA':- ,^> ':'W.«. ■?■■ "' ' :“* 

Min 


■ " *,i-^ 

^ , * 

^f'l \ ■' "\^.- 

fe" imv . 


'^iHtik - v>V* 

^gua 

f w,-r..-,u..v'2;‘-..‘ 

llH.' •! < •; ■'• 

-Vj' 1. '-■' ■-■■ . is< 

. ^ 

■in ^ % 

,.J4> '<’* 

„ A ' * ^ * " T . 

|V 

- V ■> * 

■ . • ' ; , 

'»/j^ ri'Mij^n 


i ?• 


Vir.'' 





1 




♦' 



*'t,' I;-.-’ '. »V'*’ ' 1 ^ V' ■ ‘ < V)* 







4^2' 


^ ‘ j.v^' ■ ■'■' 

Ato ife. 




■ i"fo., ■ 



■ •' \\.% 




— #44' 


■■■ ■; . 


: ‘ - 'H^ml < . ■ •■ 


\ • 


■ _ t . • iWl-V .r ‘ 

1 ''/if- 

t • » ^ ^. . I 


1 -"li 

t .*s.. 


CHAEITY AND HUMOUR* 


S EVERAL charitable ladies of this city, to some of whom I am 
under great personal obligation, having thought that a Lecture 
of mine would advance a benevolent end which they had in view, 
I have preferred, in place of delivering a Discourse, which many of 
my hearers no doubt know already, upon a subject merely literary 
or biographical, to put together a few thoughts which may serve 
as a supplement to the former Lectures, if you like, and which have 
this at least in common with the kind purpose which assembles you 
here, that they rise out of the same occasion, and treat of charity. 

Besides contributing to our stock of happiness, to our harmless 
laughter and amusement, to our scorn for falsehood and pretension, 
to our righteous hatred of hypocrisy, to oim education in the 
perception of truth, our love of honesty, our knowledge of life, 
and shrewd guidance through the world, have not our humorous 
writers, our gay and kind weekday preachers, done much in support 
of that holy cause which has assembled you in this place ; and which 
you are all abetting — the cause of love and charity, the cause of 
the poor, the weak, and the unhappy ; the sweet mission of love 
and tenderness, and peace and good-will towards men ? That same 
theme which is urged upon you by the eloquence and example of 

* This lecture was first delivered in New York on behalf of a charity at the 
time of Mr. Thackeray’s visit to America in 1852, when he had been giving 
his series of lectures on the English Humourists. It was subsequently re- 
peated with slight variations in London (once under the title of “Weekday 
Preachers ”) for the benefit of the families of Angus B. Reach and Douglas 
Jerrold. The lecture on behalf of the Jerrold Fund was given on July 22, 
1857, the day after the declaration of the poll in the Oxford election, when 
Mr. Thackeray was a candidate for Parliament, and was defeated by Mr. 
Cardwell, The Times, in its account of the lecture, says: “The opening 
words of the discourse, uttered with a comical solemnity, of which Mr. 
Thackeray alone is capable, ran thus : — ‘ Walking yesterday in the High 
Street of a certain ancient city.’ So began the lecturer, and was interrupted 
by a storm of laughter that deferred for some moments the completion of 
the sentence.” 


713 


714 CHARITY AND HUMOUR 

good men to whom you are delighted listeners on Sabbath-days, is 
taught in his way and according to his power by the humorous 
writer, the commentator on everyday life and manners. 

And as you are here assembled for a charitable purpose, giving 
your contributions at the door to benefit deserving people who 
need them, I like to hope and think that the men of our calling 
have done something in aid of the cause of charity, and have helped, 
with kind words and kind thoughts at least, to confer happiness 
and to do good. If the humorous writers claim to be weekday 
preachers, have they conferred any benefit by their sermons ? Are 
people happier, better, better disposed to their neighbours, more 
inclined to do works of kindness, to love, forbear, forgive, pity, after 
reading in Addison, in Steele, in Fielding, in Goldsmith, in Hood, in 
Dickens 1 I hope and believe so, and fancy that in writing they are 
also acting charitably, contributing with the means which Heaven 
supplies them to forward the end which brings you too together. 

A love of the human species is a very vague and indefinite kind 
of virtue, sitting very easily on a man, not confining his actions at 
all, shining in print, or exploding in paragraphs, after which efforts 
of benevolence, the philanthropist is sometimes said to go home, 
and be no better than his neighbours. Tartuffe and Joseph 
Surface, Stiggins and Chadband, who are always preaching fine 
sentiments, and are no more virtuous than hundreds of those 
whom they denounce and whom they cheat, are fair objects of 
mistrust and satire; but their hypocrisy, the homage, according 
to the old saying, which vice pays to virtue, has this of good in it, 
that its fruits are good : a man may preach good morals, though 
he may be himself but a lax practitioner ; a Pharisee may put 
pieces of gold into the charity-plate out of mere hypocrisy and 
ostentation, but the bad man’s gold feeds the widow and the father- 
less as well as the good man’s. The butcher and baker must needs 
look, not to motives, but to money, in return for their wares. 

I am not going to hint that we of the Literary calling resemble 
Monsieur Tartuffe or Monsieur Stiggins, though there may be such 
men in our body, as there are in all. 

A literary man of the humouristic turn is pretty sure to be of 
a philanthropic nature, to have a great sensibility, to be easily 
moved to pain or pleasure, keenly to appreciate the varieties of 
temper of people round about him, and sympathise in their laughter, 
love, amusement, tears. Such a man is philanthropic, man-loving 
by nature, as another is irascible, or red-haired, or six feet high. 
And so I would arrogate no particular merit to literary men for 
the possession of this faculty of doing good which some of them 
enjoy. It costs a gentleman no sacrifice to be benevolent on paper ; 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 715 

and the luxury of indulging in the most beautiful and brilliant 
sentiments never makes any man a penny the poorer. A literary 
man is no better than another, as far as my experience goes ; and 
a man writing a book, no better nor no worse than one who keeps 
accounts in a ledger, or follows any other occupation. Let us, how- 
ever, give him credit for the good, at least, which he is the means 
of doing, as we give credit to a man with a million for the hundred 
which he puts into the plate at a charity-sermon. He never misses 
them. He has made them in a moment by a lucky speculation, and 
parts with them, knowing that he has an almost endless balance at his 
bank, whence he can call for more. But in esteeming the benefaction, 
we are grateful to the benefactor, too, somewhat ; and so of men of 
genius, richly endowed, and lavish in parting with their mind’s wealth, 
we may view them at least kindly and favourably, and be thankful 
for the bounty of which Providence has made them the dispensers. 

I have said myself somewhere, I do not know with what correct- 
ness (for definitions never are complete), that humour is wit and 
love ; I am sure, at any rate, that the best humour is that which 
contains most humanity, that which is flavoured throughout with 
tenderness and kindness. This love does not demand constant 
utterance or actual expression, as a good father, in conversation with 
his children or wife, is not perpetually embracing them, or making 
protestations of his love ; as a lover in the society of his mistress 
is not, at least as far as I am led to believe, for ever squeezing 
her hand, or sighing in her ear, “ My soul’s darling, I adore you ! ” 
He shows his love by his conduct, by his fidelity, by his watchful 
desire to make the beloved person happy ; it lightens from his eyes 
when she appears, though he may not ;5peak it ; it fills his heart 
when she is present or absent ; influences all his words and actions ; 
suffuses his whole being ; it sets the father cheerily to work through 
the long day, supports him through the tedious labour of the weary 
absence or journey, and sends him happy home again, yearning 
towards the wife and children. This kind of love is not a spasm, 
but a life. It fondles and caresses at due seasons, no doubt ; but 
the fond heart is always beating fondly and truly, though the wife 
is not sitting hand-in-hand with him, or the children hugging at his 
knee. And so with a loving humour : I think, it is a genial 
writer’s habit of being ; it is the kind gentle spirit’s way of looking 
out on the world — that sweet friendliness which fills his heart and 
his style. You recognise it, even though there may not be a single 
point of wit, or a single pathetic touch in the page ; though you 
may not be called upon to salute his genius by a laugh or a tear. 
That collision of ideas, which provokes the one or the other, must 
be occasional. They must be like papa’s embraces which I spoke 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


716 

of anon, who only delivers them now and again, and cannot be 
expected to go on kissing the children all night. And so the 
writer’s jokes and sentiment, his ebullitions of feeling, his outbreaks 
of high spirits, must not be too frequent. One tires of a page of 
which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who 
is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One 
suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour ; 
these ought to be true and manly in a man, as everything else in 
his life should be manly and true ; and he loses his dignity by 
laughing or weeping out of place, or too often. 

When the Reverend Laurence Sterne begins to sentimentalise 
over the carriage in Monsieur Dessein’s courtyard, and pretends 
to squeeze a tear out of a rickety old shandrydan ; when, presently, 
he encounters the dead donkey on his road to Paris, and snivels 
over that asinine corpse, I say: Away, you drivelling quack: 
do not palm off these grimaces of grief upon simple folks who know 
no better, and cry misled by your hypocrisy.” Tears are sacred. 
The tributes of kind hearts to misfortune, the mites which gentle 
souls drop into the collections made for God’s poor and unhappy, 
are not to be tricked out of them by a whimpering hypocrite, 
handing round a begging-box for your compassion, and asking your 
pity for a lie. When that same man tells me of Lefevre’s illness 
and Uncle Toby’s charity; of the noble at Rennes coming home 
and reclaiming his sword, I thank him for the generous emotion 
which, springing genuinely from his own heart, has caused mine 
to admire benevolence and sympathise with honour ; and to* feel 
love, and kindness, and pity. 

If I do not love Swift, as, thank God, I do not, however 
immensely I may admire him, it is because I revolt from the man who 
placards himself as a professional hater of liis own kind ; because: 
he chisels his savage indignation on his tombstone, as if to per- 
petuate his protest against being born of our race — the suffering, the 
weak, the erring, the wicked, if you will, but still the friendly, 
the loving children of God our Father : it is because, as I read 
through Swift’s dark volumes, I never find the aspect of nature 
seems to delight him ; the smiles of children to please him ; tlie 
sight of wedded love to soothe him. I do not remember in any 
line of his writing a passing allusion to a natural scene of beauty. 
When he speaks about the families of his comrades and brother 
clergymen, it is to assail them with gibes and scorn, and to laugh 
at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does 
mention in the Journal to Stella a sick child, to be sure — a 
child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the smallpox — but then 
it is to confound the brat for being ill, and the mother Jor attending 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


717 


to it, when she should have been busy about a Court intrigue, in 
which the Dean was deeply engaged. And he alludes to a suitor 
of Stella’s, and a match she might have made, and would have made, 
very likely, with an honourable and faithful and attached man, 
Tisdall, who loved her, and of whom Swift speaks, in a letter to 
this lady, in language so foul that you wmidd not bear to hear it. 
In treating of the good the humourists have done, of the love and 
kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this 
one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope ! be kind 
to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them ! 

Of Mr. Congreve’s contributions to the English stock of bene- 
volence, I do not speak; for, of any moral legacy to posterity, 
I doubt whether that brilliant man ever thought at all. He had 
some money, as I have told ; every shilling of which he left to his 
friend the Duchess of Marlborough, a lady of great fortune and the 
highest fashion. He gave the gold of his brains to persons of 
fortune and fashion, too. There is no more feeling in his comedies 
than in as many books of Euclid. He no more pretends to teach 
love for the poor, and good-will for the unfortunate, than a dancing- 
master does ; he teaches pirouettes and flic-flacs; and how to bow 
to a lady, and to walk a minuet. In his private life Congreve 
was immensely liked — more so than any man of his age, almost ; 
and, to have been so liked, must have been kind and good-natured. 
His good-nature bore him through extreme bodily ills and pain, with 
uncommon cheerfulness and courage. Being so gay, so bright, so 
popular, such a grand seigneur, be sure he was kind to those about 
him, generous to his dependants, serviceable to his friends. Society 
does not like a man so long as it liked Congreve, unless he is likeable ; 
it finds out a quack very soon ; it scorns a poltroon or a curmudgeon : 
we may be certain that this man was brave, good-tempered, and 
liberal ; so, very likely, is Monsieur Pirouette, of whom we spoke ; 
he cuts his capers, he grins, bows, and dances to his fiddle. In 
private he may have a hundred virtues ; in public, he teaches 
dancing. His business is cotillons, not ethics. 

As much may be said of those charming and lazy Epicureans, 
Gay and Prior, sweet lyric singers, comrades of Anacreon, and 
disciples of love and the bottle. “ Is there any moral shut within 
the bosom of a rose ? ” sings our great Tennyson. Does a nightingale 
preach from a bough, or the lark from his cloud? Not knowingly ; 
yet we may be grateful, and love larks and roses, and the flower- 
crowned minstrels, too, who laugh and who sing. 

Of Addison’s contributions to the charity of the world I have 
spoken before, in trying to depict that noble figure ; and say now, 
as then, that we should thank him as one of the greatest bepe: 


718 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


factors of that vast and immeasurably spreading family which 
speaks our common tongue. Wherever it is spoken, there is no 
man that does not feel, and understand, and use the noble English 
word “gentleman.” And there is no man that teaches us to be 
gentlemen better than Joseph Addison. Gentle in our bearing 
through life; gentle and courteous to our neighbour; gentle in 
dealing with his follies and weaknesses ; gentle in treating his 
opposition ; deferential to the old ; kindly to the poor, and those 
below us in degree ; for people above us and below us we must 
find, in whatever hemisphere we dwell, whether kings or presidents 
govern us ; and in no republic or monarchy that I know of, is a 
citizen exempt from the tax of befriending poverty and weakness, 
of respecting age, and of honouring his father and mother. It has 
just been whispered to me — I have not been three months in the 
country, and, of course, cannot venture to express an opinion of 
my own — that, in regard to paying this latter tax of respect and 
honour to age, some very few of the Republican youtlis are occa- 
sionally a little remiss. I have heard of young Sons of Freedom 
publishing their Declaration of Independence before they could well 
spell it ; and cutting the connection with father and mother before 
they had learned to shave. My own time of life having been 
stated, by various enlightened organs of public opinion, at almost 
any figure from forty-five to sixty, I cheerfully own that I belong 
to the Fogey interest, and ask leave to rank in, and plead for, that 
respectable class. Now a gentleman can but be a gentleman, in 
Broadwood or the backwoods, in Pall Mall or California; and 
where and whenever he lives, thousands of miles away in the 
wilderness, or hundreds of years hence, I am sure that reading the 
writings of this true gentleman, this true Christian, this noble 
Joseph Addison, must do him good. He may take Sir Roger de 
Coverley to the Diggings with him, and learn to be gentle and 
good-humoured, and urbane, and friendly in the midst of that 
struggle in which his life is engaged. I take leave to say that 
the most brilliant youth of this city may read over this delightful 
memorial of a bygone age, of fashions long passed away ; of manners 
long since changed and modified ; of noble gentlemen, and a great, 
and a brilliant and polished society ; and find in it much to charm 
and polish, to refine and instruct him, a courteousness, which can 
be out of place at no time, and under no flag, a politeness and 
simplicity, a truthful manhood, a gentle respect and deference, 
which may be kept as the unbought grace of life, and cheap defence 
of mankind, long after its old artificial distinctions, after periwigs, 
and small-swords, and ruffles, and red-heeled shoes, and titles, and 
stars and garters have passed away. I will tell you when I have 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 719 

been put in mind of two of the finest gentlemen books bring us any 
mention of. I mean our books (not books of history, but books of 
humour). I will tell you when I have been put in mind of the 
courteous gallantry of the noble knight, Sir Roger de Coverley of 
Coverley Manor, of tlie noble Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha : 
here in your own omnibus-carriages and railway-cars, when I have 
seen a woman step in, handsome or not, well dressed or not, and 
a workman in hobnail shoes, or a dandy in the height of the fashion, 
rise up and give her his place. I think Mr. Spectator, wdth his 
short face, if he had seen such a deed of courtesy, would have 
smiled a sweet smile to the doer of that gentleman-like action, 
and have made him a low bow from under his great periwig, and 
have gone home and written a pretty paper about him. 

I am sure Dick Steele would have hailed him, were he dandy 
or mechanic, and asked him to a tavern to share a bottle, or perhaps 
half-a-dozen. ^ Mind, I do not set down the five last flasks to Dick’s 
score for virtue, and look upon them as works of the most question- 
able supererogation. 

Steele, as a literary benefactor to the world’s charity, must 
rank very high, indeed, not merely from his givings, which were 
abundant, but because his endowments are prodigiously increased 
in value since he bequeathed them, as the revenues of the lands, 
bequeathed to our Foundling Hospital at London, by honest Captain 
Coram, its founder, are immensely enhanced by the houses since 
built upon them. Steele was the founder of sentimental writing 
in English, and how the land has been since occupied, and what 
hundreds of us have laid out gardens and built up tenements on 
Steele’s ground ! Before his time, readers or hearers were never 
called upon to cry except at a tragedy, and compassion was not 
expected to express itself otlierwise than in blank verse, or for 
personages much lower in rank than a dethroned monarch, or a 
widowed or a jilted empress. He stepped off the high-heeled 
cothurnus, and came down into common life; he held out his 
great hearty arms, and embraced us all; he had a bow for all 
women ; a kiss for all children ; a shake of the hand for all men, 
high or low; he showed us Heaven’s sun shining every day on 
quiet homes ; not gilded palace-roofs only, or Court processions, or 
heroic warriors fighting for princesses, and pitclied battles. He 
took away comedy from behind the fine ladies’ alcove, or the screen 
where the libertine was watching her. He ended all that wretched 
business of wives jeering at their husbands, of rakes laughing wives, 
and husbands too, to scorn. That miserable, rouged, tawdry, 
sparkling, hollow-hearted comedy of the Restoration fled before 
him, and, like the wicked spirit in the Fairy-books, shrank, as 


720 


CHARITY AND HUMOiUR 


Steele let the daylight in, and shrieked, and shuddered, and 
vanished. The stage of humourists has been common life ever 
since Steele’s and Addison’s time ; the joys and griefs, the aversions 
and sympathies, the laughter and tears of nature. 

And here, coming off the stage, and throwing aside the motley 
habit, or satiric disguise, in which he had before entertained you, 
mingling with the world, and wearing the same coat as his neigh- 
bour, the humourist’s service became straightway immensely more 
available ; his means of doing good infinitely multiplied ; his success, 
and the 'esteem in which he was held, proportionately increased. 
It requires an effort, of which all minds are not capable, to under- 
stand “ Don Quixote ” ; children and common people still read 
“ Gulliver ” for the story merely. Many more persons are sickened 
by “ Jonathan Wild ” than can comprehend the satire of it. Each 
of the great men who wrote those books was speaking from behind 
the satiric mask I anon mentioned. Its distortions* appal many 
simple spectators ; its settled sneer or laugh is unintelligible to 
thousands, who have not the wit to interpret the meaning of the 
vizored satirist preaching from within. Many a man was at fault 
about Jonathan Wild’s greatness, who could feel and relish All- 
worthy’s goodness in “ Tom Jones,” and Doctor Harrison’s in 
“ Amelia,” and dear Parson Adams, and Joseph Andrews. We love 
to read — we may grow ever so old, but we love to read of them 
still — of love and beauty, of frankness, and bravery, and generosity. 
We hate hypocrites and cowards; we long to defend oppressed 
innocence, and to soothe and succour gentle women, and children. 
We are glad when vice is foiled and rascals punished ; we lend a 
foot to kick Blifil downstairs ; and as we attend the brave bride- 
groom to his wedding, on the happy marriage day, we ask the 
groom’s-man’s privilege to salute the blushing cheek of Sophia. 
A lax morality in many a vital point I own in Fielding, but a great 
hearty sympathy and benevolence ; a great kindness for the poor ; 
a great gentleness and pity for the unfortunate ; a great love for 
the pure and good ; these are among the contributions to the charity 
of the world with which this erring but noble creature endowed it. 

As for Goldsmith, if the youngest and most unlettered person 
here has not been happy with the family at Wakefield; has not 
rejoiced when Olivia returned, and been thankful for her forgiveness 
and restoration ; has not laughed with delighted good-humour over 
Moses’s gross of green spectacles ; has not loved with all his heart 
the good Vicar, and that kind spirit which created these charming 
figures, and devised the beneficent fiction which speaks to us so 
tenderly — what call is there for me to speak 1 In tliis place, and 
on this occasion, remembering these men, I claim from you your 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 721 

sympathy for the good they have done, and for the sweet charity 
which they have bestowed on the world. 

When humour joins with rhythm and music, and appears in 
song, its influence is irresistible, its charities are countless, it stirs 
the feelings to love, peace, friendship, as scarce any moral agent 
can. The songs of Bdranger are hymns of love and tenderness ; I 
have seen great whiskered Frenchmen warbling the “ Bonne Vieille,” 
the “ Soldats, au pas, au pas,” with tears rolling down their 
mustachios. At a Burns’s Festival I have seen Scotchmen singing 
Burns, while the drops twinkled on their furrowed cheeks ; while 
each rough hand was flung out to grasp its neighbour’s ; while early 
scenes and sacred recollections, and dear and delightful memories 
of the past came rushing back at the sound of the familiar words 
and music, and the softened heart was full of love, and friendship, 
and home. Humour ! if tears are tlie alms of gentle spirits, and 
may be counted, as sure they may, among the sweetest of life’s 
charities, — of that kindly sensibility, and sweet sudden emotion, 
which exhibits itself at the eyes, I know no such provocative as 
humour. It is an irresistible sympathiser ; it surprises you into 
compassion : you are laughing and disarmed, and suddenly forced 
into tears. I heard a humorous balladist not long since, a minstrel 
with wool on his head, and an ultra-Ethiopian complexion, who 
performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these spectacles 
in the most unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of 
tragedy-queens, dying on the stage, and expiring in appropriate 
blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked 
up, with deep respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen in 
pulpits, and without being dimmed ; and behold a vagabond with a 
corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note which 
sets the whole heart thrilling with happy pity. Humour ! humour 
is the mistress of tears ; she knows the way to the forts lachry- 
marum^ strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, 
and bids the fountain gusli and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads 
more from her natural springs than ever tragedy has watered from 
her pompous old urn. 

Popular humour, and especially modem popular humour, and the 
writers, its exponents, are always kind and chivalrous, taking the 
side of the weak against the strong. In our plays, and books, and 
entertainments for the lower classes in England, I scarce remember 
a story or theatrical piece in which a wicked aristocrat is not be- 
pummelled by a dashing young champion of the people. There was 
a book which had an immense popularity in England, and I believe 
has been greatly read here, in which the Mysteries of the Court of 
London were said to be unveiled by a gentleman who, I suspect, 

7 2 z 


722 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


knows about as much about the Court of London as he does of that 
of Pekin. Years ago I treated myself to sixpenny worth of this 
performance at a railway station, and found poor dear George IV., 
our late most religious and gracious king, occupied in the most 
flagitious designs against the tradesmen’s families in his metropolitan 
city. A couple of years after, I took sixpenny worth more of the 
same delectable history : George IV. was still at work, still ruining 
the peace of tradesmen’s families ; he had been at it for two whole 
years, and a bookseller at the Brighton station told me that this 
book was by many, many times the most popular of all periodical 
tales then published, because, says he, “ it lashes the aristocracy ! ” 
Not long since I went to two penny theatres in London; immense 
eager crowds of people thronged the buildings, and the vast masses 
thrilled and vibrated with the emotion produced by the piece repre- 
sented on the stage, and burst into applause or. laughter, such as 
many a polite actor would sign for in vain. In both these pieces 
there was a wicked Lord kicked out of the window — there is always 
a wicked Lord kicked out of the window. First piece : — “Domestic 
drama — Thrilling interest ! — Weaver’s family in distress ! — Fanny 
gives away her bread to little Jacky, and starves ! — Enter wicked 
Lord : tempts Fanny with offer of Diamond Necklace, Champagne 
Suppers, and Coach to ride in ! — Enter stirrdy Blacksmith. — Scuffle 
between Blacksmith and Aristocratic minion : exit wicked Lord out 
of the window.” Fanny, of course, becomes Mrs. Blacksmith. 

The second piece was a nautical drama, also of thrilling interest, 
consisting chiefly of hornpipes, and acts of most tremendous oppres- 
sion on the part of certain Earls and Magistrates towards the people. 
Two wicked Lords were in this piece the atrocious scoundrels : one 
Aristocrat, a deep-dyed villain, in short duck trousers and Berlin 
cotton gloves ; while the other minion of wealth enjoyed an eyeglass 
with a blue riband, and whisked about the stage with a penny cane. 
Having made away with Fanny Forester’s lover, Tom Bowling, by 
means of a pressgang, they meet her all alone on a common, and 
subject her to the most opprobrious language and behaviour : “ Re- 
lease me, villains ! ” says Fanny, pulling a brace of pistols out of her 
pockets, and crossing them over her breast so as to cover wicked 
Lord to the right, wicked Lord to the left ; and they might have 
remained in that position ever so much longer (for the aristoeratic 
rascals had pistols too), had not Tom Bowling returned from sea at 
the very nick of time, armed with a great marlinespike, with which 
— whack ! whack ! down goes wicked Lord No. 1 — wicked Lord 
No. 2. Fanny rushes into Tom’s arms with an hysterical shriek, 
and I dare say they marry, and are very happy ever after. Popular 
fun is always kind : it is the champion of the humble against the 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


723 


great. In all popular parables, it is Little Jack that conquers, and 
the Giant that topples down. I think our popular authors are 
rather hard upon the great folks. Well, well ! their Lordships have 
all the money, and can afford to be laughed at. 

In our days, in England, the importance of the humorous 
preacher has prodigiously increased ; his audiences are enormous : 
every week or month his happy congregations flock to him j they 
never tire of such sermons. I believe my friend Mr. Punch is as 
popular to-day as he has been any day since his birth ; I believe 
that Mr. Dickens’s readers are even more numerous than they have 
ever been since his unrivalled pen commenced to delight the world 
with its humour. We have among us other literary parties; we 
have Punch, as I have said, preaching from his booth ; we have a 
Jerrold party very numerous, and faithful to that acute thinker and 
distinguished wit ; and we have also — it must be said, and it is still 
to be hoped — a Vanity-Fair party, the author of which work has lately 
been described by the London Times newspaper as a writer of 
considerable parts, but a dreary misanthrope, who sees no good 
anywhere, who sees the sky above him green, I think, instead of 
blue, and only miserable sinners round about him. So we are ; so 
is every writer and every reader I ever heard of ; so was every being 
who ever trod this earth, save One. I cannot help telling the truth 
as I view it, and describing what I see. To describe it otherwise 
than it seems to me would be falsehood in that calling in which it 
has pleased Heaven to place me ; treason to that conscience which 
says that men are weak ; that truth must be told ; that fault must 
be owned ; that pardon must be prayed for ; and that love reigns 
supreme over all. 

I look back at the good which of late years the kind English 
Humourists have done ; and if you are pleased to rank the present 
speaker among that class, I own to an honest pride at thinking what 
benefits society has derived from men of our calling. That “Song 
of the Shirt,” which Punch first published, and the noble, the 
suffering, the melancholy, the tender Hood sang, may surely rank as 
a great act of charity to the world, and call from it its thanks and 
regard for its teacher and benefactor. That astonishing poem, which 
you all of you know, of the “ Bridge of Sighs,” who can read it 
without tenderness, without reverence to Heaven, charity to man, 
and thanks to the beneficent genius which sang for us nobly % 

I never saw the writer but once ; but shall always be glad to 
think that some words of mine, printed in a periodical of that day, 
and in praise of these amazing verses (which, strange to say, appeared 
almost unnoticed at first in the magazine in which Mr. Hood published 
them) — I am proud, I say, to think that some words of appreciation 


724 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


of mine reached him on his deathbed, and i)le{ised and soothed him 
in that hour of manful resignation and pain. 

As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, multiplied kindnesses 
which he has conferred upon us all ; upon our children ; upon 
people educated and uneducated; upon the myriads here and at 
home, who speak our common tongue ; have not you, have not 
I, all of us reason to be thankful to this kind friend, who soothed 
and charmed so many hours, brought pleasure and sweet laughter to 
so many homes ; made such multitudes of children happy ; en- 
dowed us with such a sweet store of gracious thoughts, fair fancies, 
soft sympathies, hearty enjoyments'? There are creations of Mr. 
Dickens’s which seem to me to rank as personal benefits ; figures so 
delightful, that one feels happier and better for knowing them, as 
one does for being brought into the society of very good men and 
women. The atmosphere in which these people live is wholesome 
to breathe in ; you feel that to be allowed to speak to them is a 
personal kindness; you come away better for your contact with 
them ; your hands seem cleaner from having the privilege of shaking 
theirs. Was there ever a better charity sermon preached in the 
world than Dickens’s “ Christmas Carol ” "? I believe it occasioned 
immense hospitality throughout England ; was the means of lighting 
up hundreds of kind fires at Christmas-time : caused a wonderful 
outpouring of Christmas good feeling ; of Christmas jjunch-brewing ; 
an awful slaughter of Christmas turkeys, and roasting and basting 
of Christmas beef. As for this man’s love of children, that amiable 
organ at the back of his honest head must be perfectly monstrous. 
All children ought to love him. I know two that do, and read his 
books ten times for once that they peruse the dismal preachments 
of their fiither. I know one who, when she is happy, reads 
“ Nicholas Nickleby ” ; when she is unhappy, reads “ Nicholas 
Nickleby ” ; when she is tired, reads “ Nicholas Nickleby ” ; when 
she is in bed, reads “ Nicholas Nickleby ” ; when she has nothing to 
do, reads “ Nicholas Nickleby ” ; and when she has finished the 
book, reads “ Nicholas Nickleby ” over again. This candid young 
critic, at ten years of age, said, “ I like Mr. Dickens’s books much 
better than your books, papa ” ; and frequently expressed her desire 
that the latter author should write a book like one of Mr. Dickens’s 
books. Who ean “? Every man must say his own thoughts in his 
own voice, in his own way ; lucky is he who has such a charming 
gift of nature as this, which brings all the children in the world 
trooping to him, and being fond of liim. 

I remember, when that famous “Nicholas Nickleby” came 
out, seeing a letter from a pedagogue in the north of England, 
which, dismal as it was, was immensely comical. “ Mr. Dickens’s 


CHARITY AND HUMOUR 


725 


ill-advised publication,” wrote the poor schoolmaster, “ has passed 
like a whirlwind over the schools of the North.” He was a pro- 
prietor of a cheap school ; Dotheboys Hall was a cheap school. 
There were many such establishments in the northern counties. 
Parents were ashamed that never were ashamed before until the 
kind satirist laughed at them ; relatives were frightened ; scores of 
little scholars were taken away; poor schoolmasters had to shut 
their shops up ; every pedagogue was voted a Squeers, and many 
suffered, no doubt unjustly ; but afterwards schoolboys’ backs were 
not so much caned; schoolboys’ meat was less tough and more 
plentiful; and schoolboys’ milk was not so sky-blue. What a 
kind light of benevolence it is that plays round Crummies and the 
Phenomenon, and all those poor theatre people in that charming 
book ! What a humour ! and what a good-humour ! I coincide 
with the youthful critic, whose opinion has just been mentioned, 
and own to a family admiration for “ Nicholas Nickleby.” 

One might go on, though the task would be endless and need- 
less, chronicling the names of kind folks with whom this kind genius 
has made us familiar. Who does not love the Marchioness, and 
Mr. Richard Swiveller ? Who does not sympathise, not only with 
Oliver Twist, but his admirable young friend the Artful Dodger? 
Who has not the inestimable advantage of possessing a Mrs. 
Nickleby in his own family ? Who does not bless Sairey Gamp 
and wonder at Mrs. Harris. Who does not venerate the chief of 
that illustrious family who, being stricken by misfortune, wisely 
and greatly turned his attention to “ coals,” the accomplished, the 
Epicurean, the dirty, the delightful Micawber ? 

I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens’s art a thousand and a thousand 
times, I delight and wonder at his genius ; I recognise in it — I 
speak with awe and reverence — a commission from that Divine 
Beneficence, whose blessed task we know it will one day be to wipe 
every tear from every eye. Thankfully I take my share of the 
feast of love and kindness which this gentle, and generous, and 
charitable soul has contributed to the happiness of the world. I 
take and enjoy my share, and say a Benediction for the meal. 


THE END 


, i 


\ • 


',v» ' 

^■ov. 


% 


% { 
f 



\ 

0 


/ 


r ; 


•;r 




tj 

'• 




i nr' 


<• 

'.iVr- • ... 

- V’ ^ M 

nU '• 

i/,*'' '/ M- ■(, ' ‘ v^Ih' 

li^‘.<;'^f i J;*u \ * 

* '*" ’ * i 

.’ •( r / ji \>i* . , , 

■ •* * 

^ I ;. ■ . M 


s*; ^ 

r 

J; ' 


- ♦ ^i 




'I 


t > • 

> 


■^« ^ If. 


. ' •• 

^ *• i 


I l; 


^ , I >' •'ll; I*,, 

1 .. 




j;r. 


S/» A 




1 ' 


.i*'* ' 


-/ • . • 
• • > . 
-.' r'T*'- 


% . ♦ • * k 

> • 




■Hi 




' > • 


'Z'.‘? 

Y*' y » * 




/ 


•f .VI 




9 


V. 




k 


J I I* ’■ 


'":^o 


'C'‘ 





1 « 












A ^ a\ a V. 1 B /, fxV 0 c 

^ <5^ A V V ^ ^ ^ rO c, ^ '^r ^ 

_A * 





xO°x. 






'^ r\ 

I, '0 


c^. y 








00 C 




\ 


0 4 ? V ^0 

' v^' 




0 N Q 




<• 


V- .J- ^ * 0 A 


\ 0 N C ^ ^ ^ 

Q> 


4 >" 

^ ct 

V c'X"’ 

^ .•\ o_ -f 


® o'^ " 1 




’ ^ ® Y <* 0 


: 


V' \v^ 

^ V 


%. 


- 0 N c , ''‘‘ **-'''' a\^ 


'' vl*^ a' 


“l v^ 




H 'T" 






U I 




T .V' ^ ff I s 

O. O V^ v" - 

- ^ -^XM ^ X ^ 

00 ' 


Ct 


* 9 - 4 


-u 


<t « 




-< 




TT^SW^ 21 

^ ‘b'^ ^ - 

. ^ i> 

s"' '-■*.% ’ 

' ■ ' _ '-. V^' - 

^A= A A- -oo 

» 5 N 0 ’ \^ , . n '^. * • 1 ■ ' '° 

P ^\-’'«a • .-6.' 'jH^-e^-P 

^'p \V ^ rK\ «» /)x *^o <X^ 

^,J>' » s’’ 

% °o cP"^ 

^ : "i o' ° 


0 « X ^ 


>• ^ 




A> 




00 


« ^ *<?. ' " ' A-^y^ ’ <. ^ ' * >f . 0 ^ a <y i. s ^ ,,<^ 


^ ^ / c ^ A 


✓ ^\\ 


^M 


\°°<. 




' ‘ V° ' ' " ' '%*''’ ’ "►* ° ’’ v'’^ X . 0 

aO^ * ^ V' ^ ^ ® A 


aV </» 


A> .W'^ ' 



.^P^. .Ov 


r\ fvJ 
-V i> ^o 

' ^ ^ r ^ 



,y> o 

,V . . , %*'» • ‘ \^>'’ ,0 - c , S."'" “ '' V -^ ' • * % '° ' ' 

■> °o 0® -P j-iP A ' 

^ «-S^^^\ \\ n^ '5^. -iX ^ 



^ : 


o 

K' o 

4 

>• 




V 


y 


' 



^ 0 



0 c 


V 

o o' 



/' 

y 


U| KaL y 

- ^' 4 j 

^P^T « 

\^M 

71 

V 


a\ . » I 8 ^ -t- 

< O /V-^Z- "t < 


o l•^^ f 0 ^ '^' /, <!> 

-f c H 



^ ^ .V o ^ 

^ AV^ 

, s " • , '°^- ' * = n'« ’” O*''^' % * lO’ ''i 

^ .. ^ 
. ^n o 

O. “'‘ o‘''"c»~“,'^-'^''^**'' .V.., ^c, 

I -fi -f ^1' 




*b ^ 



V 



^ \\^^ V I B 0 ^ K 

<1 V I B ^ ^ 





^0 N C ^ ^' • « >? 

‘ 'P .-ft s, 

' ^ - 


>p°^. 


V 

O o' 

<t 

y\ ^ ^ ^ 

V' '• ‘ 0 A > " ' O^ , S ^ A 

^ .^j^KdTas,. ■''> '-O 

V' AV <t ^\ w/k ■ 'K< c.'^ y’^>liiiif^ ' « 



z>. 


-i ^tV 

O Jl -aO^ ^ 

^0^ c ^ ^ <5^ 

0 ^ » c-S>^ ^ ^ 

•>^ ^ 

oo^ 


k 


■4 ^ 

rf. 




•S* 

^ i, >^ r\ 

* '^'- \V ^ p L 

L . 


c, 

5^ 


^ ^ -\V' \ V’ 

»“ ,<? 5 i ^ ^ ® ^ 'P . ^ <3 Ci « 

= 

2!^ < 

S' <p 

c^ ,> ^ 4 o V V 

;'*”'V •'■'* ‘ x'' ->. 

•>-, - 










